Nasser Karimi. Yahoo News/ Associated Press. 09/18/09. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran/print
TEHRAN, Iran – Hard-liners attacked senior pro-reform leaders in the streets as tens of thousands marched in competing mass demonstrations by the opposition and government supporters. Opposition protesters, chanting "death to the dictator," hurled stones and bricks in clashes with security forces firing tear gas.
The opposition held its first major street protests since mid-July, with marchers decked out in green — the reform movement's color — waving V-for-victory signs on major boulevards in the capital.
In some cases on several blocks away, larger crowds marched in government-sponsored rallies marking an annual anti-Israel commemoration, waving pictures of Iran's supreme leader and president and placards denouncing the Jewish state.
The commemoration, known as Quds Day, is a major political occasion for the government — a day for it to show its anti-Israeli credentials and its support for the Palestinians. Quds is the Arabic word for Jerusalem. During a speech for the rallies, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad railed against Israel and the West, questioning whether the Holocaust occurred and calling it a pretext for occupying Arab land.
But the opposition was determined to turn the day into a show of its survival and continued strength despite a fierce three-month-old crackdown against it since the disputed June 12 presidential election.
Top opposition leaders joined the protests, in direct defiance of commands by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who barred anti-government demonstrations on Quds Day. That could provoke an escalation in the crackdown: hard-line clerics have been demanding the past week that any leader backing the protests should be arrested.
Several tens of thousands joined the opposition marches, witnesses said — far smaller than the masses that turned out in the Quds Day rallies, which were helped by government organizing. Police and security forces, along with pro-government Basij militiamen, fanned out along main squares and avenues and in many cases tried to keep nearby opposition protesters away from the Quds Day rallies to prevent clashes, witnesses said.
Opposition supporters poured onto main boulevards and squares, wearing green T-shirts and wristbands and waving green banners and balloons. They waved pictures of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi and denounced Ahmadinejad, chanting "death to the dictator."
Others chanted, "Not Gaza, not Lebanon — our life is for Iran" — a slogan directly challenging the government's support for anti-Israeli Palestinian militants in Gaza and Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrilla. Some shouted for Ahmadinejad's government to resign. Some women marched with their children in tow.
But at one of the several opposition rallies around the city, a group of hard-liners pushed through the crowd and attacked former President Mohamad Khatami, a cleric who is one of the most prominent pro-reform figures, according to a reformist Web site. The report cited witnesses as saying the opposition activists rescued Khatami and quickly repelled the assailants.
Opposition Web sites reported that Khatami fell to the ground, but witnesses said he was only jostled and remained standing.
Hard-liners also tried to attack the main opposition leader, Mousavi, when he joined another march elsewhere in the city, a witness said. Supporters rushed Mousavi into his car when the hard-liners approached, and the vehicle sped away as his supporters pushed the hard-liners back, the witness said. He and other witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
Another pro-reform leader, Mahdi Karroubi, who also ran in the presidential election, also joined protests elsewhere in the city.
In one of the main Tehran squares, Haft-e Tir, security forces weilding batons and firing tear gas tried to break up one of the opposition marched, and were met with protesters throwing stones and bricks, witnesses said. Several policemen were seen being taken away with light injuries. At least 10 protesters were seized by plainclothes security agents in marches around the city, witnesses said.
The pro-government Quds Day rallies were held in cities around the country, and the opposition staged competing rallies in the southern and central cities of Shiraz and Isfahan, witnesses said. In Shiraz, police rushed the protesters with batons, scuffling with them, witnesses said.
The opposition claims that Ahmadinejad won the June election by fraud and that Mousavi is the rightful victor. Hundreds of thousands marched in support of Mousavi in the weeks after the vote, until police, Basij and the elite Revolutionary Guard crushed the protests, arresting hundreds. The opposition says 72 people were killed in the crackdown, thought the government puts the number at 36. The last significant protest was on July 17.
In sheer numbers, the opposition turnout was far smaller than the mass pro-government Quds Day marches — not surprising given the state's freedom to organize the gathering.
Customarily on Quds Day, Iranians gather for pro-Palestinian rallies in various parts of the city, marching through the streets and later converging for the prayer ceremony. The ceremony was established in 1979 by the leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Just hundreds of yards (meters) away from opposition protesters on the main Keshavarz Boulevard, thousands of Ahmadinejad supporters marched carrying huge photographs of the president and Supreme Leader Khamenei. Some in the government-sponsored rally chanted: "Death to those who oppose the supreme leader!"
At the climax of the occasion, Ahmadinejad addressed worshippers before Friday prayers at the Tehran University campus, reiterating his anti-Holocaust rhetoric that has drawn international condemnation since 2005. He questioned whether the "Holocaust was a real event" and saying Israel was created on "a lie and mythical claims."
Showing posts with label Iran and Jews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran and Jews. Show all posts
Friday, September 18, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Oldest Jewish Immigrant From Iran Arrives in L.A.
Jewish Journal. Karmel Melamed. 03/25/09.
(http://www.jewishjournal.com/50_Plus/article/oldest_jewish_immigrant_from_iran_arrives_in_la_20090325/)
Heshmat Elyasian, nearly 103 years old, at Los Angeles International Airport, where she arrived with her son and his family. An Iranian Jewish client of HIAS, the international migration agency, Heshmat is the oldest refugee in HIAS records, which date back to 1909, and may be the oldest ever to arrive in the United States. Photo by HIAS
After living in Iran for more than a century, witnessing the rise and fall of three kings and the upheaval of an Islamic revolution 30 years ago, 102-year-old Heshmat Elyasian arrived in Los Angeles two months ago with her immediate family to become the oldest Jewish immigrant from Iran to resettle in Los Angeles.
Because of an age-related mental decline, Elyasian was not fully aware that she had resettled in the United States. However, she said she was in good spirits during an interview with The Journal.
“I have some pain in my arms and legs from arthritis, but otherwise, thank God,” she said in her native Persian, while seated in a wheelchair and surrounded by family members at a relative’s home in the Valley.
Elyasian immigrated to the United States with her son, Manouchehr Tabari, and his family with the help of the New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). According to HIAS records, Elyasian is the oldest refugee they have helped.
“Making the transition to life in America is not easy for many reasons, especially since the Iranian currency is worth so much less when converted to dollars, but we’re grateful to be here,” said 68-year-old Tabari, who was a cinematographer and filmmaker in Iran.
Tabari said the decision for his immediate family to leave Iran was based on his desire to pursue better educational opportunities for his children in the United States. Since extended families typically live together in Iran for many years, it was only natural for Tabari to immigrate with his mother.
“The plane trip here was very difficult for all of us, especially for my mother, because it was for many hours, and they had seated all of us in different parts of the airplane,” said Tabari, who now lives at his niece’s Tarzana home. “We are still trying to get over the exhaustion of the trip and the shocks of this new environment.”
Elyasian’s long life in Iran has not been the easiest, her son explained. After her marriage, her husband, who was a butcher, lost his savings after livestock he had purchased and ritually slaughtered were not kosher due to some impurities. The couple and their six children barely survived while they lived in poor conditions in Tehran’s run-down Jewish ghetto. Her husband was forced to work small and low-paying odd jobs, while she raised their children and also earned a living helping other families with their cooking, sewing and hand-washing their laundry.
“I am the only person in my family that has had formal education, and my mother really sacrificed on my behalf so that I could get an education,” said Tabari, who produced documentary films for television networks in Iran after studying film and drama in New York during the 1960s. “I’ve taken care of her myself ever since my father suddenly died of a heart attack at age 62.”
Iranian Jewish historical scholars said they were excited about Elyasian’s arrival in the United States because of her life experience and the fact that her father was one of a few Jewish musicians to entertain the late Iranian king, Nasser-al-Din Shah Qajar, which could shed new light on how Jews were treated in the king’s court during the early 20th century.
“Life was not easy for Jews living in Iran during the time this woman was born,” said Daniel Tsadik, a professor of Iranian studies at Yeshiva University in New York. “They were typically living in poverty, faced persecution in various cities and their movement was restricted in the country, because they were considered ritually impure by the local Muslim leaders.”
Despite several mattresses and open suitcases stuffed with clothing laid out in her living room, Elyasian’s granddaughter, Soheyla Tabari, said she was excited to welcome her grandmother and uncle’s family to stay with her temporarily until they settle in their new lives in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been telling them to come here for the past 20 years, and we lost some valuable time that we could have really enjoyed together,” Soheyla Tabari said. “But it’s been a great experience for all of us to find each other again — four generations living under one roof.”
Elyasian and her family have already begun the slow process of resettlement with the help of local Jewish agencies. Once Iranian Jewish families reach the United States, the Jewish Vocational Service, Jewish Family Service and other agencies affiliated with The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles typically are among the first to help these new immigrants.
Local Iranian Jewish groups also have helped out, including the Torat Hayim Center, the SIAMAK organization and the Hope Foundation. These groups have collaborated to create the Caring Committee, which will temporarily help the family with rent, groceries, medical and legal bills, transportation and school tuition. The local Iranian American Jewish Federation has also been involved in helping these new immigrants.
The issue of Jewish immigration from Iran is particularly sensitive for local Iranian Jewish leaders. For the most part, the work of HIAS to help Jews emigrate from Iran since the 1980s has happened under the media radar in order not to embarrass the Iranian government. Community leaders have long feared that any publicity could potentially jeopardize the current flow of Jewish immigration out of Iran. The process of immigration varies for different Iranian Jews and can take anywhere from nine months to several years.
According to HIAS records, since 1979, the organization had aided more than 15,000 Iranian Jewish refugees in immigrating to the United States, nearly half of them to the Los Angeles area.
During 2007, the Chicago-based Christian Jewish nonprofit, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), along with the Jewish Agency in Israel, offered $10,000 per person to encourage Jews to leave Iran and immigrate to Israel. IFCJ officials reported that of the 20,000 Jews still living in Iran, only 125 accepted the offer and immigrated to Israel.
Frank Nikbakht, an Iranian Jewish activist and director of the L.A.-based Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, said despite the Iranian regime’s hostility toward Israel and treatment of Jews as second-class citizens, a substantial number of Jews continue to stay in Iran because they feel they will face economic and cultural challenges if they leave the country.
“Some successful and resourceful Jews [in Iran] have either a false sense of security or are willing to take risks, hoping to outlast the regime,” Nikbakht said. “Some have converted to Islam or other ‘safer’ religions, such as Christianity, to help them survive.”
For his part, Tabari said he still has a fondness for Iran and hopes to travel back there at a later date to visit with his other family members. Likewise, he said his wife is planning to care for his mother while he is looking for employment in Los Angeles’ film industry.
“I am a very optimistic man and believe strongly that God will help us,” Tabari said. “America is a land of opportunity, and we are hoping for the best here”.
For more about this story and local Iranian Jews, visit Karmel Melamed’s blog: www.jewishjournal.com/iranianamericanjews.
(http://www.jewishjournal.com/50_Plus/article/oldest_jewish_immigrant_from_iran_arrives_in_la_20090325/)
Heshmat Elyasian, nearly 103 years old, at Los Angeles International Airport, where she arrived with her son and his family. An Iranian Jewish client of HIAS, the international migration agency, Heshmat is the oldest refugee in HIAS records, which date back to 1909, and may be the oldest ever to arrive in the United States. Photo by HIAS
After living in Iran for more than a century, witnessing the rise and fall of three kings and the upheaval of an Islamic revolution 30 years ago, 102-year-old Heshmat Elyasian arrived in Los Angeles two months ago with her immediate family to become the oldest Jewish immigrant from Iran to resettle in Los Angeles.
Because of an age-related mental decline, Elyasian was not fully aware that she had resettled in the United States. However, she said she was in good spirits during an interview with The Journal.
“I have some pain in my arms and legs from arthritis, but otherwise, thank God,” she said in her native Persian, while seated in a wheelchair and surrounded by family members at a relative’s home in the Valley.
Elyasian immigrated to the United States with her son, Manouchehr Tabari, and his family with the help of the New York-based Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). According to HIAS records, Elyasian is the oldest refugee they have helped.
“Making the transition to life in America is not easy for many reasons, especially since the Iranian currency is worth so much less when converted to dollars, but we’re grateful to be here,” said 68-year-old Tabari, who was a cinematographer and filmmaker in Iran.
Tabari said the decision for his immediate family to leave Iran was based on his desire to pursue better educational opportunities for his children in the United States. Since extended families typically live together in Iran for many years, it was only natural for Tabari to immigrate with his mother.
“The plane trip here was very difficult for all of us, especially for my mother, because it was for many hours, and they had seated all of us in different parts of the airplane,” said Tabari, who now lives at his niece’s Tarzana home. “We are still trying to get over the exhaustion of the trip and the shocks of this new environment.”
Elyasian’s long life in Iran has not been the easiest, her son explained. After her marriage, her husband, who was a butcher, lost his savings after livestock he had purchased and ritually slaughtered were not kosher due to some impurities. The couple and their six children barely survived while they lived in poor conditions in Tehran’s run-down Jewish ghetto. Her husband was forced to work small and low-paying odd jobs, while she raised their children and also earned a living helping other families with their cooking, sewing and hand-washing their laundry.
“I am the only person in my family that has had formal education, and my mother really sacrificed on my behalf so that I could get an education,” said Tabari, who produced documentary films for television networks in Iran after studying film and drama in New York during the 1960s. “I’ve taken care of her myself ever since my father suddenly died of a heart attack at age 62.”
Iranian Jewish historical scholars said they were excited about Elyasian’s arrival in the United States because of her life experience and the fact that her father was one of a few Jewish musicians to entertain the late Iranian king, Nasser-al-Din Shah Qajar, which could shed new light on how Jews were treated in the king’s court during the early 20th century.
“Life was not easy for Jews living in Iran during the time this woman was born,” said Daniel Tsadik, a professor of Iranian studies at Yeshiva University in New York. “They were typically living in poverty, faced persecution in various cities and their movement was restricted in the country, because they were considered ritually impure by the local Muslim leaders.”
Despite several mattresses and open suitcases stuffed with clothing laid out in her living room, Elyasian’s granddaughter, Soheyla Tabari, said she was excited to welcome her grandmother and uncle’s family to stay with her temporarily until they settle in their new lives in Los Angeles.
“I’ve been telling them to come here for the past 20 years, and we lost some valuable time that we could have really enjoyed together,” Soheyla Tabari said. “But it’s been a great experience for all of us to find each other again — four generations living under one roof.”
Elyasian and her family have already begun the slow process of resettlement with the help of local Jewish agencies. Once Iranian Jewish families reach the United States, the Jewish Vocational Service, Jewish Family Service and other agencies affiliated with The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles typically are among the first to help these new immigrants.
Local Iranian Jewish groups also have helped out, including the Torat Hayim Center, the SIAMAK organization and the Hope Foundation. These groups have collaborated to create the Caring Committee, which will temporarily help the family with rent, groceries, medical and legal bills, transportation and school tuition. The local Iranian American Jewish Federation has also been involved in helping these new immigrants.
The issue of Jewish immigration from Iran is particularly sensitive for local Iranian Jewish leaders. For the most part, the work of HIAS to help Jews emigrate from Iran since the 1980s has happened under the media radar in order not to embarrass the Iranian government. Community leaders have long feared that any publicity could potentially jeopardize the current flow of Jewish immigration out of Iran. The process of immigration varies for different Iranian Jews and can take anywhere from nine months to several years.
According to HIAS records, since 1979, the organization had aided more than 15,000 Iranian Jewish refugees in immigrating to the United States, nearly half of them to the Los Angeles area.
During 2007, the Chicago-based Christian Jewish nonprofit, International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ), along with the Jewish Agency in Israel, offered $10,000 per person to encourage Jews to leave Iran and immigrate to Israel. IFCJ officials reported that of the 20,000 Jews still living in Iran, only 125 accepted the offer and immigrated to Israel.
Frank Nikbakht, an Iranian Jewish activist and director of the L.A.-based Committee for Minority Rights in Iran, said despite the Iranian regime’s hostility toward Israel and treatment of Jews as second-class citizens, a substantial number of Jews continue to stay in Iran because they feel they will face economic and cultural challenges if they leave the country.
“Some successful and resourceful Jews [in Iran] have either a false sense of security or are willing to take risks, hoping to outlast the regime,” Nikbakht said. “Some have converted to Islam or other ‘safer’ religions, such as Christianity, to help them survive.”
For his part, Tabari said he still has a fondness for Iran and hopes to travel back there at a later date to visit with his other family members. Likewise, he said his wife is planning to care for his mother while he is looking for employment in Los Angeles’ film industry.
“I am a very optimistic man and believe strongly that God will help us,” Tabari said. “America is a land of opportunity, and we are hoping for the best here”.
For more about this story and local Iranian Jews, visit Karmel Melamed’s blog: www.jewishjournal.com/iranianamericanjews.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Iranians in Germany to visit Auschwitz
JTA
03/28/2008
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/107770.html)
Thirty Iranian expatriates living in Berlin will visit Auschwitz in April.
The ex-pats want to show Iran's president, who has denied the scope of the Holocaust, that they have no doubt about the facts of the Holocaust, "the most massive, industrialized extermination in the 20th century," a statement by organizers said.
The trip, from April 11 to 14, is sponsored by the Iranian Dialog Circle of Berlin and the Berlin educational branch of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, which is associated with Germany's Green Party. The group also will meet with the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor in Krakow and with the leadership of the Krakow Jewish community.
The group said this week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust and threatening of Israel, "has introduced a new expression of anti-Semitism onto the stage of international politics."
Iranians are associated with such statements "against their will," the statement said. "That is why many Iranians living abroad, for whom it is easier to counter these false statements about history, consider it their moral and democratic duty to show the public that they do not endorse the policy and ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
03/28/2008
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/107770.html)
Thirty Iranian expatriates living in Berlin will visit Auschwitz in April.
The ex-pats want to show Iran's president, who has denied the scope of the Holocaust, that they have no doubt about the facts of the Holocaust, "the most massive, industrialized extermination in the 20th century," a statement by organizers said.
The trip, from April 11 to 14, is sponsored by the Iranian Dialog Circle of Berlin and the Berlin educational branch of the Heinrich-Böll Foundation, which is associated with Germany's Green Party. The group also will meet with the daughter of an Auschwitz survivor in Krakow and with the leadership of the Krakow Jewish community.
The group said this week that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's questioning of the Holocaust and threatening of Israel, "has introduced a new expression of anti-Semitism onto the stage of international politics."
Iranians are associated with such statements "against their will," the statement said. "That is why many Iranians living abroad, for whom it is easier to counter these false statements about history, consider it their moral and democratic duty to show the public that they do not endorse the policy and ideology of the Islamic Republic of Iran."
Monday, March 3, 2008
"Wiped off the Map" - The Rumor of the Century
by Arash Norouzi
(http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/)
Accessed 03/03/08
Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.
On Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism". Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.
Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.
THE ACTUAL QUOTE:
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PROOF:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site
www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm
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THE SPEECH AND CONTEXT:
While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism". One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.
THE ORIGIN:
One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth". In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth", or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth". The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
THE REACTION:
The mistranslated "wiped off the map" quote attributed to Iran's President has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.
Following news of Iran's remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "revulsion" and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel's destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is "preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state" is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide.
The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the "map" reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the earth". Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has "called for the destruction of Israel", as do senior officials in the United States government.
President George W. Bush said the comments represented a "specific threat" to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, "..the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel." Former Presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran "talks openly about destroying Israel", and insists, "The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth". In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as "the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, 'It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth' ". The consensus is clear.
Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth's Washington Post interview in September 2006:
Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
We need to look at the scene in the Middle East — 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza — what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.
Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?
Our suggestion is very clear:... Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted.... The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.
You've been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?
What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago...
So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let's allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people.
The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad's interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter's face with his standard "Don't the Palestinians have rights?, etc." retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the "map" comment to be true. This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, "as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map".
Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.
As Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to The Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:
It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state."
The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. "They speak proudly and openly of their desire to 'wipe Israel off the map.' And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world." Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: "We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY:
On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post's headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be 'wiped out', while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'.
Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter's Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel's days are numbered], and the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel Will be wiped out].
The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to "Haaretz Service and Agencies", are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed "the Jewish state" to "Israel" in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.
The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: ["Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday's meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.
He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."
Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except "He called for elections" became "He said elections should be held..".
It gets more interesting.
The quote used in the original AP article and copied in The Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked. Care to find out? Go to:
www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0612134902101231.htm
There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:
"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated".
Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom".
In the IRNA's actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be "wiped out". And how will it be wiped out? "The same way the Soviet Union was". Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad's previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.
What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.
This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq's much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.
Iran's President has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive". With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time".
Arash Norouzi is an artist and co-founder of The Mossadegh Project.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/news/rumor-of-the-century/)
Accessed 03/03/08
Across the world, a dangerous rumor has spread that could have catastrophic implications. According to legend, Iran's President has threatened to destroy Israel, or, to quote the misquote, "Israel must be wiped off the map". Contrary to popular belief, this statement was never made, as the following article will prove.
On Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 at the Ministry of Interior conference hall in Tehran, newly elected Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delivered a speech at a program, reportedly attended by thousands, titled "The World Without Zionism". Large posters surrounding him displayed this title prominently in English, obviously for the benefit of the international press. Below the poster's title was a slick graphic depicting an hour glass containing planet Earth at its top. Two small round orbs representing the United States and Israel are shown falling through the hour glass' narrow neck and crashing to the bottom.
Before we get to the infamous remark, it's important to note that the "quote" in question was itself a quote— they are the words of the late Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution. Although he quoted Khomeini to affirm his own position on Zionism, the actual words belong to Khomeini and not Ahmadinejad. Thus, Ahmadinejad has essentially been credited (or blamed) for a quote that is not only unoriginal, but represents a viewpoint already in place well before he ever took office.
THE ACTUAL QUOTE:
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:
"Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad."
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE PROOF:
The full quote translated directly to English:
"The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time".
Word by word translation:
Imam (Khomeini) ghoft (said) een (this) rezhim-e (regime) ishghalgar-e (occupying) qods (Jerusalem) bayad (must) az safheh-ye ruzgar (from page of time) mahv shavad (vanish from).
Here is the full transcript of the speech in farsi, archived on Ahmadinejad's web site
www.president.ir/farsi/ahmadinejad/speeches/1384/aban-84/840804sahyonizm.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE SPEECH AND CONTEXT:
While the false "wiped off the map" extract has been repeated infinitely without verification, Ahmadinejad's actual speech itself has been almost entirely ignored. Given the importance placed on the "map" comment, it would be sensible to present his words in their full context to get a fuller understanding of his position. In fact, by looking at the entire speech, there is a clear, logical trajectory leading up to his call for a "world without Zionism". One may disagree with his reasoning, but critical appraisals are infeasible without first knowing what that reasoning is.
In his speech, Ahmadinejad declares that Zionism is the West's apparatus of political oppression against Muslims. He says the "Zionist regime" was imposed on the Islamic world as a strategic bridgehead to ensure domination of the region and its assets. Palestine, he insists, is the frontline of the Islamic world's struggle with American hegemony, and its fate will have repercussions for the entire Middle East.
Ahmadinejad acknowledges that the removal of America's powerful grip on the region via the Zionists may seem unimaginable to some, but reminds the audience that, as Khomeini predicted, other seemingly invincible empires have disappeared and now only exist in history books. He then proceeds to list three such regimes that have collapsed, crumbled or vanished, all within the last 30 years:
(1) The Shah of Iran- the U.S. installed monarch
(2) The Soviet Union
(3) Iran's former arch-enemy, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein
In the first and third examples, Ahmadinejad prefaces their mention with Khomeini's own words foretelling that individual regime's demise. He concludes by referring to Khomeini's unfulfilled wish: "The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time. This statement is very wise". This is the passage that has been isolated, twisted and distorted so famously. By measure of comparison, Ahmadinejad would seem to be calling for regime change, not war.
THE ORIGIN:
One may wonder: where did this false interpretation originate? Who is responsible for the translation that has sparked such worldwide controversy? The answer is surprising.
The inflammatory "wiped off the map" quote was first disseminated not by Iran's enemies, but by Iran itself. The Islamic Republic News Agency, Iran's official propaganda arm, used this phrasing in the English version of some of their news releases covering the World Without Zionism conference. International media including the BBC, Al Jazeera, Time magazine and countless others picked up the IRNA quote and made headlines out of it without verifying its accuracy, and rarely referring to the source. Iran's Foreign Minister soon attempted to clarify the statement, but the quote had a life of its own. Though the IRNA wording was inaccurate and misleading, the media assumed it was true, and besides, it made great copy.
Amid heated wrangling over Iran's nuclear program, and months of continuous, unfounded accusations against Iran in an attempt to rally support for preemptive strikes against the country, the imperialists had just been handed the perfect raison d'être to invade. To the war hawks, it was a gift from the skies.
It should be noted that in other references to the conference, the IRNA's translation changed. For instance, "map" was replaced with "earth". In some articles it was "The Qods occupier regime should be eliminated from the surface of earth", or the similar "The Qods occupying regime must be eliminated from the surface of earth". The inconsistency of the IRNA's translation should be evidence enough of the unreliability of the source, particularly when transcribing their news from Farsi into the English language.
THE REACTION:
The mistranslated "wiped off the map" quote attributed to Iran's President has been spread worldwide, repeated thousands of times in international media, and prompted the denouncements of numerous world leaders. Virtually every major and minor media outlet has published or broadcast this false statement to the masses. Big news agencies such as The Associated Press and Reuters refer to the misquote, literally, on an almost daily basis.
Following news of Iran's remark, condemnation was swift. British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed "revulsion" and implied that it might be necessary to attack Iran. U.N. chief Kofi Annan cancelled his scheduled trip to Iran due to the controversy. Ariel Sharon demanded that Iran be expelled from the United Nations for calling for Israel's destruction. Shimon Peres, more than once, threatened to wipe Iran off the map. More recently, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu, who has warned that Iran is "preparing another holocaust for the Jewish state" is calling for Ahmadinejad to be tried for war crimes for inciting genocide.
The artificial quote has also been subject to additional alterations. U.S. officials and media often take the liberty of dropping the "map" reference altogether, replacing it with the more acutely threatening phrase "wipe Israel off the face of the earth". Newspaper and magazine articles dutifully report Ahmadinejad has "called for the destruction of Israel", as do senior officials in the United States government.
President George W. Bush said the comments represented a "specific threat" to destroy Israel. In a March 2006 speech in Cleveland, Bush vowed he would resort to war to protect Israel from Iran, because, "..the threat from Iran is, of course, their stated objective to destroy our strong ally Israel." Former Presidential advisor Richard Clarke told Australian TV that Iran "talks openly about destroying Israel", and insists, "The President of Iran has said repeatedly that he wants to wipe Israel off the face of the earth". In an October 2006 interview with Amy Goodman, former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter referred to Ahmadinejad as "the idiot that comes out and says really stupid, vile things, such as, 'It is the goal of Iran to wipe Israel off the face of the earth' ". The consensus is clear.
Confusing matters further, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pontificates rather than give a direct answer when questioned about the statement, such as in Lally Weymouth's Washington Post interview in September 2006:
Are you really serious when you say that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
We need to look at the scene in the Middle East — 60 years of war, 60 years of displacement, 60 years of conflict, not even a day of peace. Look at the war in Lebanon, the war in Gaza — what are the reasons for these conditions? We need to address and resolve the root problem.
Your suggestion is to wipe Israel off the face of the Earth?
Our suggestion is very clear:... Let the Palestinian people decide their fate in a free and fair referendum, and the result, whatever it is, should be accepted.... The people with no roots there are now ruling the land.
You've been quoted as saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Is that your belief?
What I have said has made my position clear. If we look at a map of the Middle East from 70 years ago...
So, the answer is yes, you do believe that it should be wiped off the face of the Earth?
Are you asking me yes or no? Is this a test? Do you respect the right to self-determination for the Palestinian nation? Yes or no? Is Palestine, as a nation, considered a nation with the right to live under humane conditions or not? Let's allow those rights to be enforced for these 5 million displaced people.
The exchange is typical of Ahmadinejad's interviews with the American media. Predictably, both Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes and CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he wants to "wipe Israel off the map". As usual, the question is thrown back in the reporter's face with his standard "Don't the Palestinians have rights?, etc." retort (which is never directly answered either). Yet he never confirms the "map" comment to be true. This did not prevent Anderson Cooper from referring to earlier portions of his interview after a commercial break and lying, "as he said earlier, he wants Israel wiped off the map".
Even if every media outlet in the world were to retract the mistranslated quote tomorrow, the major damage has already been done, providing the groundwork for the next phase of disinformation: complete character demonization. Ahmadinejad, we are told, is the next Hitler, a grave threat to world peace who wants to bring about a new Holocaust. According to some detractors, he not only wants to destroy Israel, but after that, he will nuke America, and then Europe! An October 2006 memo titled Words of Hate: Iran's Escalating Threats released by the powerful Israeli lobby group AIPAC opens with the warning, "Ahmadinejad and other top Iranian leaders are issuing increasingly belligerent statements threatening to destroy the United States, Europe and Israel." These claims not only fabricate an unsubstantiated threat, but assume far more power than he actually possesses. Alarmists would be better off monitoring the statements of the ultra-conservative Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, who holds the most power in Iran.
As Iran's U.N. Press Officer, M.A. Mohammadi, complained to The Washington Post in a June 2006 letter:
It is not amazing at all, the pick-and-choose approach of highlighting the misinterpreted remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in October and ignoring this month's remarks by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that "We have no problem with the world. We are not a threat whatsoever to the world, and the world knows it. We will never start a war. We have no intention of going to war with any state."
The Israeli government has milked every drop of the spurious quote to its supposed advantage. In her September 2006 address to the United Nations General Assembly, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni accused Iran of working to nuke Israel and bully the world. "They speak proudly and openly of their desire to 'wipe Israel off the map.' And now, by their actions, they pursue the weapons to achieve this objective to imperil the region and threaten the world." Addressing the threat in December, a fervent Prime Minister Ehud Olmert inadvertently disclosed that his country already possesses nuclear weapons: "We have never threatened any nation with annihilation. Iran, openly, explicitly and publicly threatens to wipe Israel off the map. Can you say that this is the same level, when they are aspiring to have nuclear weapons, as America, France, Israel, Russia?"
MEDIA IRRESPONSIBILITY:
On December 13, 2006, more than a year after The World Without Zionism conference, two leading Israeli newspapers, The Jerusalem Post and Haaretz, published reports of a renewed threat from Ahmadinejad. The Jerusalem Post's headline was Ahmadinejad: Israel will be 'wiped out', while Haaretz posted the title Ahmadinejad at Holocaust conference: Israel will 'soon be wiped out'.
Where did they get their information? It turns out that both papers, like most American and western media, rely heavily on write ups by news wire services such as the Associated Press and Reuters as a source for their articles. Sure enough, their sources are in fact December 12th articles by Reuter's Paul Hughes [Iran president says Israel's days are numbered], and the AP's Ali Akbar Dareini [Iran President: Israel Will be wiped out].
The first five paragraphs of the Haaretz article, credited to "Haaretz Service and Agencies", are plagiarized almost 100% from the first five paragraphs of the Reuters piece. The only difference is that Haaretz changed "the Jewish state" to "Israel" in the second paragraph, otherwise they are identical.
The Jerusalem Post article by Herb Keinon pilfers from both the Reuters and AP stories. Like Haaretz, it uses the following Ahmadinejad quote without attribution: ["Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out," he added]. Another passage apparently relies on an IRNA report:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom," Ahmadinejad said at Tuesday's meeting with the conference participants in his offices, according to Iran's official news agency, IRNA.
He said elections should be held among "Jews, Christians and Muslims so the population of Palestine can select their government and destiny for themselves in a democratic manner."
Once again, the first sentence above was wholly plagiarized from the AP article. The second sentence was also the same, except "He called for elections" became "He said elections should be held..".
It gets more interesting.
The quote used in the original AP article and copied in The Jerusalem Post article supposedly derives from the IRNA. If true, this can easily be checked. Care to find out? Go to:
www.irna.ir/en/news/view/menu-234/0612134902101231.htm
There you will discover the actual IRNA quote was:
"As the Soviet Union disappeared, the Zionist regime will also vanish and humanity will be liberated".
Compare this to the alleged IRNA quote reported by the Associated Press:
"The Zionist regime will be wiped out soon the same way the Soviet Union was, and humanity will achieve freedom".
In the IRNA's actual report, the Zionist regime will vanish just as the Soviet Union disappeared. Vanish. Disappear. In the dishonest AP version, the Zionist regime will be "wiped out". And how will it be wiped out? "The same way the Soviet Union was". Rather than imply a military threat or escalation in rhetoric, this reference to Russia actually validates the intended meaning of Ahmadinejad's previous misinterpreted anti-Zionist statements.
What has just been demonstrated is irrefutable proof of media manipulation and propaganda in action. The AP deliberately alters an IRNA quote to sound more threatening. The Israeli media not only repeats the fake quote but also steals the original authors' words. The unsuspecting public reads this, forms an opinion and supports unnecessary wars of aggression, presented as self defense, based on the misinformation.
This scenario mirrors the kind of false claims that led to the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, a war now widely viewed as a catastrophic mistake. And yet the Bush administration and the compliant corporate media continue to marinate in propaganda and speculation about attacking Iraq's much larger and more formidable neighbor, Iran. Most of this rests on the unproven assumption that Iran is building nuclear weapons, and the lie that Iran has vowed to physically destroy Israel. Given its scope and potentially disastrous outcome, all this amounts to what is arguably the rumor of the century.
Iran's President has written two rather philosophical letters to America. In his first letter, he pointed out that "History shows us that oppressive and cruel governments do not survive". With this statement, Ahmadinejad has also projected the outcome of his own backwards regime, which will likewise "vanish from the page of time".
Arash Norouzi is an artist and co-founder of The Mossadegh Project.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, November 5, 2007
Iran TV series sympathetic to Jews
Viewers riveted by show that depicts Holocaust, rarely mentioned in Iran
9.16.07
Nasser Karimi
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/09/16/international/i120043D29.DTL)
TEHRAN, Iran - It is Iran's version of "Schindler's List," a miniseries that tells the tale of an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews escape the Holocaust — and viewers across the country are riveted.
That's surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's more surprising is that government media produced the series, and is airing it on state-run television.
The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in state media in Iran, school textbooks don't discuss it and Iranians have little information about it.
Yet the series titled "Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It shows men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.
"Where are they taking them?" the horrified hero, a young Iranian diplomat who works at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, asks someone in a crowd of onlookers.
"The Fascists are taking the Jews to the concentration camps," the man says. The hero, named Habib Parsa, then begins giving Iranian passports to Jews to allow them to flee occupied France to then-Palestine.
Based on a true story
Though the Habib character is fictional, it is based on a true story of diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Paris in the 1940s who gave out about 500 Iranian passports for Jews to use to escape.
The show's appearance now may reflect an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.
About 25,000 Jews live in Iran, the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel. They have one representative in parliament, which is run mostly by Islamic clerics.
The series could not have aired without being condoned by Iran's clerical leadership. The state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, who has final say in all matters inside Iran.
Moderate conservatives have been gaining ground in Iran, where there is increasing discontent with the ruling hardliners over rising tensions with the West, a worsening economy and price hikes in basic commodities.
The government even allowed the series to break another taboo in Iran: For the first time, many actresses appear without the state-mandated Islamic dress code. The producers wanted to realistically portray 1940s Paris, and thus avoided the headscarves and head-to-foot robes that all women must normally wear on Iranian TV.
Ahmadinejad sparked widespread outrage in 2005 when he made comments casting doubt on the Holocaust and saying the state of Israel should be "wiped from the map." His government organized a conference of Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world in December.
But the series has won support even from hardliners. Some argue that it links the Holocaust with Israel's creation, thus boosting an argument by Ahmadinejad that if the Nazi killing of Jews did take place, the Palestinians who then lived in Palestine should not have had to pay the price for it by the creation of Israel after the war.
"The series differentiates between Jews and Zionism. The ground for forming Israel is prepared when Hitler's army puts pressure on activist Jews. In this sense, it considers Nazism parallel to Zionism," the hard-line newspaper Keyhan said.
However, if the series does aim to make that point, it has not done so overtly.
Gaining understanding
State media have said the series, which began in April, is popular. It has been a revelation for some Iranians and has pulled them away from more popular satellite channels, which are banned but which many watch anyway on illegal dishes. The fare on state TV is usually dry.
"Once, I wept when I learned through the film what a dreadful destiny the small nation had during the world war in the heart of so-called civilized Europe," said Mahboubeh Rahamati, a Tehran bank teller.
Kazem Gharibi said he watches the series every Monday on a TV in his grocery store.
"Through this film, I understood that Jews had a hard time in the war — helpless and desperate, as we were when Iraq imposed war on us," he said, referring to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
The series began with a love story between Habib, the embassy employee, and a French Jew, Sara Stroke, in the early 1940s. Viewers say the love story pulls them in as much as the history.
After Paris is occupied by the Nazis, Habib decides to forge Iranian passports for many French Jews to save them from the Holocaust — starting with Sara and her family. The German government accepts his embassy's claim that the passport holders are from an Iranian tribe and lets them leave France.
Habib is imprisoned by the Nazis for espionage after his forgeries are discovered. He then is released and returns to Tehran, where he is jailed again for forging passports.
Eight episodes remain in the series, and viewers drawn by the love story are on edge as they await the finish.
"I have watched the series from the beginning," said Sedigheh Karandish, a housewife and mother of two. "It's pulling me in to see what these two people do at the end. Hopefully, it will be a happy ending."
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
9.16.07
Nasser Karimi
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/09/16/international/i120043D29.DTL)
TEHRAN, Iran - It is Iran's version of "Schindler's List," a miniseries that tells the tale of an Iranian diplomat in Paris who helps Jews escape the Holocaust — and viewers across the country are riveted.
That's surprising enough in a country where hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has questioned whether the Holocaust even took place. What's more surprising is that government media produced the series, and is airing it on state-run television.
The Holocaust is rarely mentioned in state media in Iran, school textbooks don't discuss it and Iranians have little information about it.
Yet the series titled "Zero Degree Turn" is clearly sympathetic to the Jews' plight during World War II. It shows men, women and children with yellow stars on their clothes being taken forcibly out of their homes and loaded into trucks by Nazi soldiers.
"Where are they taking them?" the horrified hero, a young Iranian diplomat who works at the Iranian Embassy in Paris, asks someone in a crowd of onlookers.
"The Fascists are taking the Jews to the concentration camps," the man says. The hero, named Habib Parsa, then begins giving Iranian passports to Jews to allow them to flee occupied France to then-Palestine.
Based on a true story
Though the Habib character is fictional, it is based on a true story of diplomats in the Iranian Embassy in Paris in the 1940s who gave out about 500 Iranian passports for Jews to use to escape.
The show's appearance now may reflect an attempt by Iran's leadership to moderate its image as anti-Semitic and to underline a distinction that Iranian officials often make — that their conflict is with Israel, not with the Jewish people.
About 25,000 Jews live in Iran, the largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel. They have one representative in parliament, which is run mostly by Islamic clerics.
The series could not have aired without being condoned by Iran's clerical leadership. The state broadcaster is under the control of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khomenei, who has final say in all matters inside Iran.
Moderate conservatives have been gaining ground in Iran, where there is increasing discontent with the ruling hardliners over rising tensions with the West, a worsening economy and price hikes in basic commodities.
The government even allowed the series to break another taboo in Iran: For the first time, many actresses appear without the state-mandated Islamic dress code. The producers wanted to realistically portray 1940s Paris, and thus avoided the headscarves and head-to-foot robes that all women must normally wear on Iranian TV.
Ahmadinejad sparked widespread outrage in 2005 when he made comments casting doubt on the Holocaust and saying the state of Israel should be "wiped from the map." His government organized a conference of Holocaust deniers and skeptics from around the world in December.
But the series has won support even from hardliners. Some argue that it links the Holocaust with Israel's creation, thus boosting an argument by Ahmadinejad that if the Nazi killing of Jews did take place, the Palestinians who then lived in Palestine should not have had to pay the price for it by the creation of Israel after the war.
"The series differentiates between Jews and Zionism. The ground for forming Israel is prepared when Hitler's army puts pressure on activist Jews. In this sense, it considers Nazism parallel to Zionism," the hard-line newspaper Keyhan said.
However, if the series does aim to make that point, it has not done so overtly.
Gaining understanding
State media have said the series, which began in April, is popular. It has been a revelation for some Iranians and has pulled them away from more popular satellite channels, which are banned but which many watch anyway on illegal dishes. The fare on state TV is usually dry.
"Once, I wept when I learned through the film what a dreadful destiny the small nation had during the world war in the heart of so-called civilized Europe," said Mahboubeh Rahamati, a Tehran bank teller.
Kazem Gharibi said he watches the series every Monday on a TV in his grocery store.
"Through this film, I understood that Jews had a hard time in the war — helpless and desperate, as we were when Iraq imposed war on us," he said, referring to the eight-year Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.
The series began with a love story between Habib, the embassy employee, and a French Jew, Sara Stroke, in the early 1940s. Viewers say the love story pulls them in as much as the history.
After Paris is occupied by the Nazis, Habib decides to forge Iranian passports for many French Jews to save them from the Holocaust — starting with Sara and her family. The German government accepts his embassy's claim that the passport holders are from an Iranian tribe and lets them leave France.
Habib is imprisoned by the Nazis for espionage after his forgeries are discovered. He then is released and returns to Tehran, where he is jailed again for forging passports.
Eight episodes remain in the series, and viewers drawn by the love story are on edge as they await the finish.
"I have watched the series from the beginning," said Sedigheh Karandish, a housewife and mother of two. "It's pulling me in to see what these two people do at the end. Hopefully, it will be a happy ending."
© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Benedictus. An Ambitious Iranian Jewish American Collaboration
Review by Lale' Shahparaki
Accessed 10/04/2007
(http://persianmirror.com/Article_det.cfm?id=1729&getArticleCategory=79&getArticleSubCategory=128)
An Ambitious International Collaboration among Iranian, Israeli and American Artists is worth your support! Created by Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Motti Lerner, Roberta Levitow, Daniel Michaelson and Torange Yeghiazarian
San Francisco - Golden Thread Productions' 10th Anniversary Season opens with an ambitious international collaboration, Benedictus, bringing together acclaimed artists from Iran, Israel and the United States: Motti Lerner, one of Israel's most provocative contemporary playwrights, Torange Yeghiazarian, Artistic Director of Golden Thread, Iranian-American director Mahmood Karimi-Hakak of Siena College and American designer Daniel Michaelson of Bennington College and designer for the acclaimed 'Spring Awakening' at the Public Theatre, and dramaturg Roberta Levitow, founder of Theatre Without Borders. Propelled by world events and against a backdrop of an imminent US invasion of Iran, two estranged childhood friends, one Jewish and one Muslim, born in the same town in Iran, agree to a secret meeting in a Benedictine monastery in Rome to negotiate a price for safety and freedom. The cast includes renowned Iranian theatre and cinema thespian, Ali Pourtash,* Egyptian born Arab-American actor, Al Faris*, most recently seen in 'The Unit' at the invitation of its creator, David Mamet, as well as veteran Bay Area performer, Earll Kingston*. The play runs September 29th through October 21st at the Thick House in San Francisco. Opening night reception will be hosted by Baraka Restaurant. For more information visit www.goldenthread.org.
'When we began the Iran/Israel/US project two years ago,' says Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian, 'we didn't imagine how disturbingly timely the subject of US-Iran relations would be today.' Given the impossibility of meeting in Iran and the complexities of meeting in Israel, these artists are working in the US to create collaborative theatre in the midst of escalating political conflict amongst their home countries. The piece created offers an opportunity to engage non-violently and creatively with the historical, social, religious and aesthetic dimensions of this crucial inter-relationship. Benedictus explores how the relationship among Iran, Israel, and United States is impacting the world. The work began in the summer of 2005 as the Iran/Israel/US Project, with a two-week residency at Siena College in upstate New York and has continued over the past two years.
The central premise of Benedictus was inspired by an actual event. In 2005, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran and President Moshe Katsav of Israel were seated alphabetically at the service for the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Although the two countries had broken off diplomatic relations in 1979 with the fall of the Shah and the installation of the revolutionary government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the two presidents apparently shook hands and exchanged a few words in Farsi, since they both had been born some 50 years earlier in the Iranian province of Yazd.
Artists’ Biographies
Mahmood Karimi-Hakak is the Artistic Director of Mahak International Artists Inc. and a Professor of Creative Arts at Siena College, has written, produced, directed, designed and/or acted in over 50 stage and screen plays in the U.S., Europe and his native Iran. His plays and films have received international acclaim and awards at such festivals as Edinburgh, Netherlands, Berlin, Delhi, Montreal, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Springs, Maryland and Tehran. A recipient of the 2005 Raymond C. Kennedy Award, Dr. Karimi-Hakak’s literary credits include five plays, two books of poetry, several translations from and into Persian and numerous articles and interviews both in English and Persian. Prior to his tenure at Siena, he taught theatre in Belgium, Germany and his native Iran, as well as CUNY, Towson and Southern Methodist Universities here in the U.S. and served as Artistic Director of Community of International Artists (CIA), Forough Ensemble (FE) and Creative Arts Street Theatre (CAST).
Motti Lerner is a widely known and internationally sought after contemporary Israeli playwright, screenwriter and scholar. His critically acclaimed plays have consistently sought to open up public discourse on the complex reality of Israeli life and offer alternatives to consensus views. His film script Spring 1941 is currently in production with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. Motti has received several awards for his writing including the Meskin Award for the best play (1985), and the Israel Motion Picture Academy award for best TV drama in 1995 and in 2004. He frequently lectures at European and American Universities on playwriting, Israeli theatre and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is actively involved in the peace movement in Israel. His American productions include: Pangs of the Messiah at Theatre J in Washington DC, The murder of Isaac at Centerstage Theatre, Baltimore, and also as part of the New York Now festival at Public Theatre in NY, Exile in Jerusalem at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre of Detroit and also at La Mama Theatre in New York, Hard Love at Theatre Or in Durham, NC and also at Victory Gardens in Chicago, Passing The Love of Women at Theatre J in Washington DC, Coming Home at Golden Thread Productions, San Francisco and Autumn at the Georgetown University Program. He has served as writer in residence at The Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies in Oxford and as a visiting professor at Duke University. In 1994, Motti was awarded the Prime Minister of Israel Award for Writers. He has also participated at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. He currently teaches Political Playwriting at Tel Aviv University.
Roberta Levitow has directed over 50 productions in NYC, LA and nationally, with a particular expertise in developing original writing and new work. She is co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, an informal group supporting international theatre exchange at www.theatrewithoutborders.com. With TWB, Roberta is working with Dr. Cynthia Cohen and Coexistence International at Brandeis University as part of a 'Theatre & Peace Building Initiative'. She has led several workshops on an international level, and has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the National University of Theatre & Film in Bucharest, Romania, as well as a Fulbright Senior Specialist Artist-in-Residence at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has received several international awards and honors for her work in experimental theatre and theatre workshops, and was the American Honoree at the 15th Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre, 2003. Her accomplishments and writings have been featured in The New York Times and American Theatre Magazine and several international publications and collections. Participation in national service organizations includes Peer Panel for the N.E.A., the Executive Board of SSDC (The Society of Stages Directors and Choreographers) and the Executive Board of TCG (Theatre Communications Group). Visiting Professor at Bennington College from 2000-2005, she taught from 1990-2000 as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at U.C.L.A.
Daniel Michaelson he has created costumes and scenery for Opera, Dance, Off-Broadway and regional theatres. He designed scenery and costumes for the American premiere of'L’Etoile' (Chabrier), and costumes for the American premiere of 'The Goose of Cairo,' (Mozart) and, for the highly acclaimed production of 'Spring Awakening' directed by Liviu Culei at the Public Theater. Outside of the United States his designs have been seen in Germany, England and Japan. Danny has been the Resident Costume Designer at the Juilliard School as well as a Muppet maker. He holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and has been on the faculty of Bennington College since 1981 teaching Costume Design. Danny is also a professional mediator, and with Bennington College faculty member, Susan Sgorbati,, co-directs Quantum Leap, a program they created for youth at risk in Bennington. Danny has given presentations and workshops both nationally and internationally about Quantum Leap and the use of performance with students at risk.
Torange Yeghiazarian is an Iranian-born theatre artist of Armenian heritage. She writes, directs and performs for theatre. Among her writing and directing credits are AGABA, Publicly Resting, Call Me Mehdi, Behind Glass Windows, Dawn at Midnight, Operation No Penetration, Lysistrata 97! and Waves. Torange received her Master's degree in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University where she collaborated with The San Francisco Mime Troupe in creating the melodrama Torch! Her plays reflect the perspective of the culturally displaced in tackling today’s world of contradictory realities and values. Torange is the Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions, where she has devoted her professional life to exploring Middle Eastern cultures and identities through theatre arts.
Ali Pourtash*, a renowned Iranian actor, has performed since age fourteen. He has been a part of numerous Iranian and American TV, theatre and film productions since he came to the US in 1978. Ali has written, directed and produced a number of stage and TV productions. He has traveled his work around the world. Ali lives with his American wife, Melinda, and their two sons in San Diego.
Al Faris*, most recently guest starred on 'The Unit' at the invitation of the creator of the show Mr. David Mamet. His credits also include a recurring guest role on '24' and guest star roles on 'The Shield,' 'Sleeper Cell,' 'JAG,' 'NYPD Blue,' and 'Malcolm in the Middle.' His feature film credits include David Mamet’s 'Spartan,' Vadim Perelman’s 'House of Sand and Fog,' 'Jarhead' directed by Sam Mendes, and 'Ocean’s Twelve' directed by Steven Soderbergh. An Egyptian born Arab-American actor, Al’s most recent starring role in the indie feature 'AmericanEast' - a timely, poignant drama about Arab-Americans living in post-9/11 Los Angeles – will be in competition at the Cairo International Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. His most recent stage appearance prior to 'Benedictus' was in the role of Akhmed in the Moscow Arts Theatre production of the 'The Shelter' at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles which was nominated for five Ovation Awards, including Best Ensemble.
Golden Thread Productions is dedicated to exploring Middle Eastern culture and identity as it is expressed around the globe. This growing theatre company is rapidly gaining international recognition for excellence and innovation. Golden Thread Productions aims to create a world where the common human experience supersedes cultural and political differences by defining the Middle East not by geographical boundaries and political separations, but as the shared experience of the people, who throughout history have been touched by its tales, melodies and aromas. Founded in 1996, Golden Thread Productions exemplifies theatre’s ability to transcend cultural and political boundaries and to encourage an active dialogue among Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern communities.
Detailed information about Golden Thread Productions and about Benedictus can be found at www.goldenthread.org.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association and Screen Actors’ Guild
Saturday, September 29 @ 8 pm
Sunday, September 30 @ 8 pm
TICKETED RUN: Opening Night, Monday, October 1st at 8 pm
Fridays at 8pm
Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm
Sundays at 5pm
ALL PERFORMANCES AT: The Thick House
1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
TICKETS: Opening Night followed by Gala Reception with the artists: $100
Fridays-Sundays: $25 General Admission,
$12 Students and Seniors
Saturday Matinee: $20 General Admission
$12 for Students and Seniors
BOX OFFICE: (415) 401-8081 or www.goldenthread.org
New audience members can take advantage of our Free Night of Theatre, on Saturday 10/20 for the 2 pm performance.
To do so, please visit www.theatrebayarea.org.
Accessed 10/04/2007
(http://persianmirror.com/Article_det.cfm?id=1729&getArticleCategory=79&getArticleSubCategory=128)
An Ambitious International Collaboration among Iranian, Israeli and American Artists is worth your support! Created by Mahmood Karimi-Hakak, Motti Lerner, Roberta Levitow, Daniel Michaelson and Torange Yeghiazarian
San Francisco - Golden Thread Productions' 10th Anniversary Season opens with an ambitious international collaboration, Benedictus, bringing together acclaimed artists from Iran, Israel and the United States: Motti Lerner, one of Israel's most provocative contemporary playwrights, Torange Yeghiazarian, Artistic Director of Golden Thread, Iranian-American director Mahmood Karimi-Hakak of Siena College and American designer Daniel Michaelson of Bennington College and designer for the acclaimed 'Spring Awakening' at the Public Theatre, and dramaturg Roberta Levitow, founder of Theatre Without Borders. Propelled by world events and against a backdrop of an imminent US invasion of Iran, two estranged childhood friends, one Jewish and one Muslim, born in the same town in Iran, agree to a secret meeting in a Benedictine monastery in Rome to negotiate a price for safety and freedom. The cast includes renowned Iranian theatre and cinema thespian, Ali Pourtash,* Egyptian born Arab-American actor, Al Faris*, most recently seen in 'The Unit' at the invitation of its creator, David Mamet, as well as veteran Bay Area performer, Earll Kingston*. The play runs September 29th through October 21st at the Thick House in San Francisco. Opening night reception will be hosted by Baraka Restaurant. For more information visit www.goldenthread.org.
'When we began the Iran/Israel/US project two years ago,' says Artistic Director Torange Yeghiazarian, 'we didn't imagine how disturbingly timely the subject of US-Iran relations would be today.' Given the impossibility of meeting in Iran and the complexities of meeting in Israel, these artists are working in the US to create collaborative theatre in the midst of escalating political conflict amongst their home countries. The piece created offers an opportunity to engage non-violently and creatively with the historical, social, religious and aesthetic dimensions of this crucial inter-relationship. Benedictus explores how the relationship among Iran, Israel, and United States is impacting the world. The work began in the summer of 2005 as the Iran/Israel/US Project, with a two-week residency at Siena College in upstate New York and has continued over the past two years.
The central premise of Benedictus was inspired by an actual event. In 2005, President Mohammad Khatami of Iran and President Moshe Katsav of Israel were seated alphabetically at the service for the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Although the two countries had broken off diplomatic relations in 1979 with the fall of the Shah and the installation of the revolutionary government of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the two presidents apparently shook hands and exchanged a few words in Farsi, since they both had been born some 50 years earlier in the Iranian province of Yazd.
Artists’ Biographies
Mahmood Karimi-Hakak is the Artistic Director of Mahak International Artists Inc. and a Professor of Creative Arts at Siena College, has written, produced, directed, designed and/or acted in over 50 stage and screen plays in the U.S., Europe and his native Iran. His plays and films have received international acclaim and awards at such festivals as Edinburgh, Netherlands, Berlin, Delhi, Montreal, New York, Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Springs, Maryland and Tehran. A recipient of the 2005 Raymond C. Kennedy Award, Dr. Karimi-Hakak’s literary credits include five plays, two books of poetry, several translations from and into Persian and numerous articles and interviews both in English and Persian. Prior to his tenure at Siena, he taught theatre in Belgium, Germany and his native Iran, as well as CUNY, Towson and Southern Methodist Universities here in the U.S. and served as Artistic Director of Community of International Artists (CIA), Forough Ensemble (FE) and Creative Arts Street Theatre (CAST).
Motti Lerner is a widely known and internationally sought after contemporary Israeli playwright, screenwriter and scholar. His critically acclaimed plays have consistently sought to open up public discourse on the complex reality of Israeli life and offer alternatives to consensus views. His film script Spring 1941 is currently in production with Joseph Fiennes in the title role. Motti has received several awards for his writing including the Meskin Award for the best play (1985), and the Israel Motion Picture Academy award for best TV drama in 1995 and in 2004. He frequently lectures at European and American Universities on playwriting, Israeli theatre and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is actively involved in the peace movement in Israel. His American productions include: Pangs of the Messiah at Theatre J in Washington DC, The murder of Isaac at Centerstage Theatre, Baltimore, and also as part of the New York Now festival at Public Theatre in NY, Exile in Jerusalem at the Jewish Ensemble Theatre of Detroit and also at La Mama Theatre in New York, Hard Love at Theatre Or in Durham, NC and also at Victory Gardens in Chicago, Passing The Love of Women at Theatre J in Washington DC, Coming Home at Golden Thread Productions, San Francisco and Autumn at the Georgetown University Program. He has served as writer in residence at The Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies in Oxford and as a visiting professor at Duke University. In 1994, Motti was awarded the Prime Minister of Israel Award for Writers. He has also participated at the International Writers Program at the University of Iowa. He currently teaches Political Playwriting at Tel Aviv University.
Roberta Levitow has directed over 50 productions in NYC, LA and nationally, with a particular expertise in developing original writing and new work. She is co-founder of Theatre Without Borders, an informal group supporting international theatre exchange at www.theatrewithoutborders.com. With TWB, Roberta is working with Dr. Cynthia Cohen and Coexistence International at Brandeis University as part of a 'Theatre & Peace Building Initiative'. She has led several workshops on an international level, and has served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist at the National University of Theatre & Film in Bucharest, Romania, as well as a Fulbright Senior Specialist Artist-in-Residence at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has received several international awards and honors for her work in experimental theatre and theatre workshops, and was the American Honoree at the 15th Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre, 2003. Her accomplishments and writings have been featured in The New York Times and American Theatre Magazine and several international publications and collections. Participation in national service organizations includes Peer Panel for the N.E.A., the Executive Board of SSDC (The Society of Stages Directors and Choreographers) and the Executive Board of TCG (Theatre Communications Group). Visiting Professor at Bennington College from 2000-2005, she taught from 1990-2000 as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Theatre Department at U.C.L.A.
Daniel Michaelson he has created costumes and scenery for Opera, Dance, Off-Broadway and regional theatres. He designed scenery and costumes for the American premiere of'L’Etoile' (Chabrier), and costumes for the American premiere of 'The Goose of Cairo,' (Mozart) and, for the highly acclaimed production of 'Spring Awakening' directed by Liviu Culei at the Public Theater. Outside of the United States his designs have been seen in Germany, England and Japan. Danny has been the Resident Costume Designer at the Juilliard School as well as a Muppet maker. He holds an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts and has been on the faculty of Bennington College since 1981 teaching Costume Design. Danny is also a professional mediator, and with Bennington College faculty member, Susan Sgorbati,, co-directs Quantum Leap, a program they created for youth at risk in Bennington. Danny has given presentations and workshops both nationally and internationally about Quantum Leap and the use of performance with students at risk.
Torange Yeghiazarian is an Iranian-born theatre artist of Armenian heritage. She writes, directs and performs for theatre. Among her writing and directing credits are AGABA, Publicly Resting, Call Me Mehdi, Behind Glass Windows, Dawn at Midnight, Operation No Penetration, Lysistrata 97! and Waves. Torange received her Master's degree in Theatre Arts from San Francisco State University where she collaborated with The San Francisco Mime Troupe in creating the melodrama Torch! Her plays reflect the perspective of the culturally displaced in tackling today’s world of contradictory realities and values. Torange is the Artistic Director of Golden Thread Productions, where she has devoted her professional life to exploring Middle Eastern cultures and identities through theatre arts.
Ali Pourtash*, a renowned Iranian actor, has performed since age fourteen. He has been a part of numerous Iranian and American TV, theatre and film productions since he came to the US in 1978. Ali has written, directed and produced a number of stage and TV productions. He has traveled his work around the world. Ali lives with his American wife, Melinda, and their two sons in San Diego.
Al Faris*, most recently guest starred on 'The Unit' at the invitation of the creator of the show Mr. David Mamet. His credits also include a recurring guest role on '24' and guest star roles on 'The Shield,' 'Sleeper Cell,' 'JAG,' 'NYPD Blue,' and 'Malcolm in the Middle.' His feature film credits include David Mamet’s 'Spartan,' Vadim Perelman’s 'House of Sand and Fog,' 'Jarhead' directed by Sam Mendes, and 'Ocean’s Twelve' directed by Steven Soderbergh. An Egyptian born Arab-American actor, Al’s most recent starring role in the indie feature 'AmericanEast' - a timely, poignant drama about Arab-Americans living in post-9/11 Los Angeles – will be in competition at the Cairo International Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival. His most recent stage appearance prior to 'Benedictus' was in the role of Akhmed in the Moscow Arts Theatre production of the 'The Shelter' at the Odyssey Theatre in Los Angeles which was nominated for five Ovation Awards, including Best Ensemble.
Golden Thread Productions is dedicated to exploring Middle Eastern culture and identity as it is expressed around the globe. This growing theatre company is rapidly gaining international recognition for excellence and innovation. Golden Thread Productions aims to create a world where the common human experience supersedes cultural and political differences by defining the Middle East not by geographical boundaries and political separations, but as the shared experience of the people, who throughout history have been touched by its tales, melodies and aromas. Founded in 1996, Golden Thread Productions exemplifies theatre’s ability to transcend cultural and political boundaries and to encourage an active dialogue among Middle Eastern and non-Middle Eastern communities.
Detailed information about Golden Thread Productions and about Benedictus can be found at www.goldenthread.org.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association and Screen Actors’ Guild
Saturday, September 29 @ 8 pm
Sunday, September 30 @ 8 pm
TICKETED RUN: Opening Night, Monday, October 1st at 8 pm
Fridays at 8pm
Saturdays at 2pm and 8pm
Sundays at 5pm
ALL PERFORMANCES AT: The Thick House
1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
TICKETS: Opening Night followed by Gala Reception with the artists: $100
Fridays-Sundays: $25 General Admission,
$12 Students and Seniors
Saturday Matinee: $20 General Admission
$12 for Students and Seniors
BOX OFFICE: (415) 401-8081 or www.goldenthread.org
New audience members can take advantage of our Free Night of Theatre, on Saturday 10/20 for the 2 pm performance.
To do so, please visit www.theatrebayarea.org.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Iranians visit Yad Vashem Farsi site
THE JERUSALEM POST. Yaniv Salma-Scheer. 01/31/2007
(http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467851416&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
"Dear Yad Vashem, we just wanted to say thanks for the good information. I am an Iranian, but I love Israel and the Jewish nation, and wish the best for them, unlike our crazy President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad."
"Your site uses very simple and unbiased language to describe a very disturbing and horrific chapter of human history, and I am sure everyone who visits it will come away with a firm belief that we must all work hard, shoulder to shoulder to stop the same happening to our children and future generations. Sincerely, Ahmad."
Ask JPost.com's Iranian blogger about life in Iran
These are just two of the comments posted by Iranians on the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial's Farsi-language Internet mini-site in the five days since it was launched to raise awareness in Iran about the Holocaust.
Since the Persian site went on-line late Thursday night, some 11,000 hits have been recorded, including 2,242 visits from Iran. That figure is just 1,000 hits short of the total number of visits the Yad Vashem Web site received from Iranians in the whole of 2006.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari said Tuesday evening that none of the Farsi-language posts translated so far had been negative.
"Every year, nearly 20,000 people from Muslim countries, including Iran, visit the Yad Vashem Web site," Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem's chairman, said earlier Tuesday.
"We believe that making credible, comprehensive information about the Holocaust available to Persian speakers can contribute to the fight against Holocaust denial," Shalev added. It was especially important today to reach out to Muslim countries regarding Holocaust awareness, he said, given Ahmadinejad's recent Holocaust-denial conference in Teheran.
The Farsi Web site details, in 20 chronological chapters, the period from the rise of the Nazis in 1925 to the fall of Berlin in 1945, as well as offering pictures, information on post-war trials including Nuremburg, and poems written by victims of the Holocaust such as Abramek Koplowicz. The site was translated into Farsi by Menashe Amir, the veteran Israel Radio Farsi broadcaster, whose programs are widely listened to on short-wave in Iran.
The response to the Farsi mini-site has been very positive, said Shalev. Iranians (some of them Jewish), Iranian exiles and others have posted responses expressing remorse, sympathy and understanding. Many of the respondents stress that Ahmadinejad, in his Holocaust denial, does not speak for the Iranian people, and brand his comments inappropriate, even hateful, and not reflective of the Persian culture or people.
"The world should not allow people such as Ahmadinejad to fulfill their evil intentions. As an Iranian, I feel ashamed of his comments and am quite certain the people of my country feel the same way," writes a man identifying himself as K.R. "I think the Farsi section of this Web site can have a major effect on the understanding of people in Iran toward a situation that is historically distorted, and in Iran, we don't have much information about WWII and the Holocaust."
Paryam, another respondent, praises Yad Vashem, "as a proud Iranian," for "the effort put forth by your respectful organization in taking the time to create a Farsi language Web site to increase public knowledge about the Holocaust."
He encourages more organizations to provide Iran with the empirical knowledge needed to combat Holocaust revisionism and expurgation, and notes that "the tyrants and the Mullahs in Iran should realize the power of the Internet is far beyond their censors.
Paryam urges his own president to not only visit the Web site - at www.yadvashem.org - but to tour Yad Vashem itself and get a first-hand look at the destruction inciting genocide can produce.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467851416&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[ Back to the Article ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1995- 2007 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
(http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467851416&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull)
"Dear Yad Vashem, we just wanted to say thanks for the good information. I am an Iranian, but I love Israel and the Jewish nation, and wish the best for them, unlike our crazy President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad."
"Your site uses very simple and unbiased language to describe a very disturbing and horrific chapter of human history, and I am sure everyone who visits it will come away with a firm belief that we must all work hard, shoulder to shoulder to stop the same happening to our children and future generations. Sincerely, Ahmad."
Ask JPost.com's Iranian blogger about life in Iran
These are just two of the comments posted by Iranians on the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial's Farsi-language Internet mini-site in the five days since it was launched to raise awareness in Iran about the Holocaust.
Since the Persian site went on-line late Thursday night, some 11,000 hits have been recorded, including 2,242 visits from Iran. That figure is just 1,000 hits short of the total number of visits the Yad Vashem Web site received from Iranians in the whole of 2006.
Yad Vashem spokeswoman Estee Yaari said Tuesday evening that none of the Farsi-language posts translated so far had been negative.
"Every year, nearly 20,000 people from Muslim countries, including Iran, visit the Yad Vashem Web site," Avner Shalev, Yad Vashem's chairman, said earlier Tuesday.
"We believe that making credible, comprehensive information about the Holocaust available to Persian speakers can contribute to the fight against Holocaust denial," Shalev added. It was especially important today to reach out to Muslim countries regarding Holocaust awareness, he said, given Ahmadinejad's recent Holocaust-denial conference in Teheran.
The Farsi Web site details, in 20 chronological chapters, the period from the rise of the Nazis in 1925 to the fall of Berlin in 1945, as well as offering pictures, information on post-war trials including Nuremburg, and poems written by victims of the Holocaust such as Abramek Koplowicz. The site was translated into Farsi by Menashe Amir, the veteran Israel Radio Farsi broadcaster, whose programs are widely listened to on short-wave in Iran.
The response to the Farsi mini-site has been very positive, said Shalev. Iranians (some of them Jewish), Iranian exiles and others have posted responses expressing remorse, sympathy and understanding. Many of the respondents stress that Ahmadinejad, in his Holocaust denial, does not speak for the Iranian people, and brand his comments inappropriate, even hateful, and not reflective of the Persian culture or people.
"The world should not allow people such as Ahmadinejad to fulfill their evil intentions. As an Iranian, I feel ashamed of his comments and am quite certain the people of my country feel the same way," writes a man identifying himself as K.R. "I think the Farsi section of this Web site can have a major effect on the understanding of people in Iran toward a situation that is historically distorted, and in Iran, we don't have much information about WWII and the Holocaust."
Paryam, another respondent, praises Yad Vashem, "as a proud Iranian," for "the effort put forth by your respectful organization in taking the time to create a Farsi language Web site to increase public knowledge about the Holocaust."
He encourages more organizations to provide Iran with the empirical knowledge needed to combat Holocaust revisionism and expurgation, and notes that "the tyrants and the Mullahs in Iran should realize the power of the Internet is far beyond their censors.
Paryam urges his own president to not only visit the Web site - at www.yadvashem.org - but to tour Yad Vashem itself and get a first-hand look at the destruction inciting genocide can produce.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1167467851416&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[ Back to the Article ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 1995- 2007 The Jerusalem Post - http://www.jpost.com/
Thursday, July 12, 2007
On the Jewish Presence in Iranian History
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam
MR Zine. 03/05/07
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/aam030507.html
When the chairman of Iran's Jewish Council, Haroun Yashayaei, criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter condemning his remarks on the Holocaust, he was supported by a range of Iranian intellectuals, artists, poets, and others both within the country and without. For those amongst us with some understanding about the Jewish presence in Iranian history, it was immediately clear that Ahmadinejad's comments could be attributed to a mixture of individual ignorance about the factual circumstances of the holocaust and, more importantly, Machiavellian expediency during a period when the Iranian state was targeted by a relentless public relations campaign in the international media. As such, his comments are quite comparable to Bush's declaration that, after 11 September 2001, the United States was on a "crusade" or Silvio Berlusconi's statement about the inherent superiority of "Western" values during the same period. Indeed, I do not think it an exaggeration to place Ahmadinejad in the same category as Bush and Berlusconi. All three represent that type of politician that adhere to a dichotomous worldview: things are either black or white, good or bad, you are either with them or against them.
Ironically enough, Ahmadinejad's shortcomings are most evident in his understanding of his own civilization, especially Iran's intimate historical encounters with Judaism. A few lessons in theology communicate to us that the Bible is dotted with praise for ancient Persia and its imperial masters. The Old Testament describes the Persian king Cyrus the Great as God's "anointed" and "chosen" ruler because it was he who gave refuge to the Jews when they were persecuted by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in sixth century B.C. These actions also explain why Cyrus is mentioned in the Torah as a saint and savior of the Jewish people. Indeed one of his successors to the Persian throne, Xerxes I (Artaxerxes), married a Jewish woman, Esther, the daughter of one of his ministers. The tomb of Esther in the north-western Iranian city of Hamadan (originally called Ecabatana) draws Jewish pilgrims from all over Iran, especially during the holiday of Purim (the walls of the building explain the origins of Esther in Hebrew).
It should be added as a footnote to the contemporary history of the Persian Gulf area that Iran's real and perceived support to persecuted Jews was used by Saddam Hussein in order to demonize the "Persian menace from the East" during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). This was the central theme of two books published in Baghdad in the early 1980s: Al-Madaris al-Yahudiyya wa-l-Iraniyya fi-l-'Iraq (Jewish and Iranian Schools in Iraq) by Fadil al-Barrak; and Al-Harb al-sirriyya, khafaya al-dawr al-Isra'ili fi harb al-khalij (The Secret War: The Mysterious Role of Israel in the [First] Gulf War) by Sa'd al-Bazzaz. The former alleges the "destructive" and "dangerous" impact of Jewish and Iranian schools on Iraqi society. The latter claims to outline how Israel and Iran conspired to combat Iraq, with special reference to the destruction of the nuclear reactor in Osirak by Israeli Air Force in June 1981.
Further lessons in Iran's contemporary history show that at a time when Nazi Germany was busy implementing the "Endlösung," Iranian diplomats offered hundreds of Iranian passports to European Jews in order to facilitate their exodus, especially from Poland (there continues to be a sizeable Polish-Jewish minority in Iran to this date). The Islamic Republic itself guarantees the rights of Iran's Jewish minority, which is the largest in West Asia outside of Israel and Palestine. The 25.000 to 60.000 Jews of Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Boroujerd, and Yazd have their own cemeteries (Tehran's Jewish cemetery is online at www.beheshtieh.com), which, unlike those in Europe and Russia, are not desecrated by skinhead mobs; attend packed synagogues; send their children to Jewish schools; buy their meat in kosher butchers; and are exempt from prohibitions on alcohol. Their political representation in the Iranian parliament (majlis) is secured in the Iranian Constitution. Indeed, many Iranian-Jews fought Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), and Ahmadinejad himself recently honored an Iranian-Jewish war veteran on the occasion of the commemoration ceremony for the liberation of the south-western town of Khorramshahr from Saddam Hussein's forces. It should be added that, in August of last year, the "Association of the Iranian Jewish Community" and the management of the Jewish hospital "Sepir" in Tehran facilitated the medical support to Palestinians wounded by Israeli armed forces during the latest intifadah against the occupation.
"Anti-Semitism" is a distinctively European invention, and projecting its ideological tenets and political agenda to the Muslim world is intellectually unrewarding and analytically flawed. This is not to say that there are no anti-Jewish sentiments in the region. There are, but they are not racially motivated. They are political in nature. The equivalent to the attitudes of Ahmadinejad exists in many countries today as a consequence, in my opinion, of both the resurgence of ultra-nationalist ideologies which are always intrinsically xenophobic and the continued occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli state. The real object of this type of politics is thus not the holocaust per se. It is the Israeli state and its underlying Zionist ideology. That is why Ahmadinejad received the support of Jewish organizations such as "Neturei Karta International" which presents itself as a "world wide organization of Orthodox Jews opposed to Zionism." Anti-Zionism as opposed to anti-Semitism is a legitimate political position to take, and many will continue to voice their dissent in order to protest the abominations committed in the name of the Zionist ideal. In the meantime, it is important to divorce facts from fiction. The calculated ignorance of states means that we should strengthen our empathy and alertness, especially when it comes to unearthing their myths and distortions, whether with regard to established historical facts such as the holocaust or in relation to the deaths and destructions in Gaza, Kabul, Baghdad, or Grozny. What is needed, above all else then, is inclusive dialogue that is ideologically dispassionate and intellectually honest.
For those readers who think that this is merely an abstract demand from an idealistic intellectual, allow me to discuss a very specific example. In May 2006, bloggers and investigative journalists exposed as wholly invented a story by Amir Taheri, a story that was concocted in order to present Iran as an anti-Semitic entity. In an article for the National Post of Canada, Taheri had claimed that a new law would require Iranian Jews to "be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes while Christians will be assigned the color red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the color of their zonnar." Accordind to Taheri, "the new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake and thus becoming najis (unclean)." To reiterate the message, the paper ran alongside the article a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat. The National Post was forced to retract the bogus piece and apologize publicly. But by then the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Ahmadinejad, and the New York Sun had picked up the story. It should be added that, in another New York Post column in 2005, Taheri claimed that Iran's ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, was one of the students involved in the capture of US diplomats in Tehran between 1979 and 1980. The story was retracted after Dwight Simpson, a professor at San Francisco State University, wrote to the newspaper explaining that the allegation was "false." On the day of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, Zarif was a "graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University. He was my student," Simpson told the editors, "and he served also as my teaching assistant." Worringly, Amir Taheri was amongst a group of "experts" on Iran and the region invited to the White House in a meeting with Tony Blair and George W. Bush in May 2006.
There is a particular interest linked to the representation of Iran as an irrational, "anti-Semitic" polity. At the least, it legitimates the demonization of the Iranian state, at most it mobilizes public opinion in support of military action. The ball is in our court. Unravelling the myths and distortions of politicians or the transnational media is not a futile endeavor. Our powers to dissent from the mainstream are real. Our instruments, scholarly research and critical analysis, are strong. You will find that anyone who tells you otherwise is either chronically disillusioned or the agent of a particular ideology opposed to the merits of international dialogue and cross-cultural empathy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is the author of The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy (London: Routledge, 2006). He teaches international relations at Oxford University. MRZine has published his "The Muslim in the Mirror" (23 Feb. 2006); "Persian Atoms: Enriching Facts, Diverting Fiction" (26 April 2006); "Iraq, Iran, and the New World Order" (25 May 2006); "The Muslim Presence in the Racist Mind" (15 June 2006); "Palestine Sans Frontières" (18 July 2006); "Reflections on Arab and Iranian Ultra-Nationalism" (20 November 2006); and "Uprising against the 'War on Terror': The Danger of US Foreign Policy to International Security" (16 February 2007) . Consult Adib-Moghaddam's Web site for his upcoming publications.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments (3)| Trackback | Print
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MR Zine. 03/05/07
http://www.monthlyreview.org/mrzine/aam030507.html
When the chairman of Iran's Jewish Council, Haroun Yashayaei, criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a letter condemning his remarks on the Holocaust, he was supported by a range of Iranian intellectuals, artists, poets, and others both within the country and without. For those amongst us with some understanding about the Jewish presence in Iranian history, it was immediately clear that Ahmadinejad's comments could be attributed to a mixture of individual ignorance about the factual circumstances of the holocaust and, more importantly, Machiavellian expediency during a period when the Iranian state was targeted by a relentless public relations campaign in the international media. As such, his comments are quite comparable to Bush's declaration that, after 11 September 2001, the United States was on a "crusade" or Silvio Berlusconi's statement about the inherent superiority of "Western" values during the same period. Indeed, I do not think it an exaggeration to place Ahmadinejad in the same category as Bush and Berlusconi. All three represent that type of politician that adhere to a dichotomous worldview: things are either black or white, good or bad, you are either with them or against them.
Ironically enough, Ahmadinejad's shortcomings are most evident in his understanding of his own civilization, especially Iran's intimate historical encounters with Judaism. A few lessons in theology communicate to us that the Bible is dotted with praise for ancient Persia and its imperial masters. The Old Testament describes the Persian king Cyrus the Great as God's "anointed" and "chosen" ruler because it was he who gave refuge to the Jews when they were persecuted by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in sixth century B.C. These actions also explain why Cyrus is mentioned in the Torah as a saint and savior of the Jewish people. Indeed one of his successors to the Persian throne, Xerxes I (Artaxerxes), married a Jewish woman, Esther, the daughter of one of his ministers. The tomb of Esther in the north-western Iranian city of Hamadan (originally called Ecabatana) draws Jewish pilgrims from all over Iran, especially during the holiday of Purim (the walls of the building explain the origins of Esther in Hebrew).
It should be added as a footnote to the contemporary history of the Persian Gulf area that Iran's real and perceived support to persecuted Jews was used by Saddam Hussein in order to demonize the "Persian menace from the East" during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988). This was the central theme of two books published in Baghdad in the early 1980s: Al-Madaris al-Yahudiyya wa-l-Iraniyya fi-l-'Iraq (Jewish and Iranian Schools in Iraq) by Fadil al-Barrak; and Al-Harb al-sirriyya, khafaya al-dawr al-Isra'ili fi harb al-khalij (The Secret War: The Mysterious Role of Israel in the [First] Gulf War) by Sa'd al-Bazzaz. The former alleges the "destructive" and "dangerous" impact of Jewish and Iranian schools on Iraqi society. The latter claims to outline how Israel and Iran conspired to combat Iraq, with special reference to the destruction of the nuclear reactor in Osirak by Israeli Air Force in June 1981.
Further lessons in Iran's contemporary history show that at a time when Nazi Germany was busy implementing the "Endlösung," Iranian diplomats offered hundreds of Iranian passports to European Jews in order to facilitate their exodus, especially from Poland (there continues to be a sizeable Polish-Jewish minority in Iran to this date). The Islamic Republic itself guarantees the rights of Iran's Jewish minority, which is the largest in West Asia outside of Israel and Palestine. The 25.000 to 60.000 Jews of Tehran, Shiraz, Isfahan, Boroujerd, and Yazd have their own cemeteries (Tehran's Jewish cemetery is online at www.beheshtieh.com), which, unlike those in Europe and Russia, are not desecrated by skinhead mobs; attend packed synagogues; send their children to Jewish schools; buy their meat in kosher butchers; and are exempt from prohibitions on alcohol. Their political representation in the Iranian parliament (majlis) is secured in the Iranian Constitution. Indeed, many Iranian-Jews fought Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988), and Ahmadinejad himself recently honored an Iranian-Jewish war veteran on the occasion of the commemoration ceremony for the liberation of the south-western town of Khorramshahr from Saddam Hussein's forces. It should be added that, in August of last year, the "Association of the Iranian Jewish Community" and the management of the Jewish hospital "Sepir" in Tehran facilitated the medical support to Palestinians wounded by Israeli armed forces during the latest intifadah against the occupation.
"Anti-Semitism" is a distinctively European invention, and projecting its ideological tenets and political agenda to the Muslim world is intellectually unrewarding and analytically flawed. This is not to say that there are no anti-Jewish sentiments in the region. There are, but they are not racially motivated. They are political in nature. The equivalent to the attitudes of Ahmadinejad exists in many countries today as a consequence, in my opinion, of both the resurgence of ultra-nationalist ideologies which are always intrinsically xenophobic and the continued occupation of Palestinian territories by the Israeli state. The real object of this type of politics is thus not the holocaust per se. It is the Israeli state and its underlying Zionist ideology. That is why Ahmadinejad received the support of Jewish organizations such as "Neturei Karta International" which presents itself as a "world wide organization of Orthodox Jews opposed to Zionism." Anti-Zionism as opposed to anti-Semitism is a legitimate political position to take, and many will continue to voice their dissent in order to protest the abominations committed in the name of the Zionist ideal. In the meantime, it is important to divorce facts from fiction. The calculated ignorance of states means that we should strengthen our empathy and alertness, especially when it comes to unearthing their myths and distortions, whether with regard to established historical facts such as the holocaust or in relation to the deaths and destructions in Gaza, Kabul, Baghdad, or Grozny. What is needed, above all else then, is inclusive dialogue that is ideologically dispassionate and intellectually honest.
For those readers who think that this is merely an abstract demand from an idealistic intellectual, allow me to discuss a very specific example. In May 2006, bloggers and investigative journalists exposed as wholly invented a story by Amir Taheri, a story that was concocted in order to present Iran as an anti-Semitic entity. In an article for the National Post of Canada, Taheri had claimed that a new law would require Iranian Jews to "be marked out with a yellow strip of cloth sewn in front of their clothes while Christians will be assigned the color red. Zoroastrians end up with Persian blue as the color of their zonnar." Accordind to Taheri, "the new codes would enable Muslims to easily recognize non-Muslims so that they can avoid shaking hands with them by mistake and thus becoming najis (unclean)." To reiterate the message, the paper ran alongside the article a 1935 photograph of a Jewish businessman in Berlin with a yellow, six-pointed star sewn on his overcoat. The National Post was forced to retract the bogus piece and apologize publicly. But by then the New York Post and the Jerusalem Post, which also featured a photo of a yellow star from the Nazi era over a photo of Ahmadinejad, and the New York Sun had picked up the story. It should be added that, in another New York Post column in 2005, Taheri claimed that Iran's ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, was one of the students involved in the capture of US diplomats in Tehran between 1979 and 1980. The story was retracted after Dwight Simpson, a professor at San Francisco State University, wrote to the newspaper explaining that the allegation was "false." On the day of the seizure of the US embassy in Tehran, Zarif was a "graduate student in the Department of International Relations of San Francisco State University. He was my student," Simpson told the editors, "and he served also as my teaching assistant." Worringly, Amir Taheri was amongst a group of "experts" on Iran and the region invited to the White House in a meeting with Tony Blair and George W. Bush in May 2006.
There is a particular interest linked to the representation of Iran as an irrational, "anti-Semitic" polity. At the least, it legitimates the demonization of the Iranian state, at most it mobilizes public opinion in support of military action. The ball is in our court. Unravelling the myths and distortions of politicians or the transnational media is not a futile endeavor. Our powers to dissent from the mainstream are real. Our instruments, scholarly research and critical analysis, are strong. You will find that anyone who tells you otherwise is either chronically disillusioned or the agent of a particular ideology opposed to the merits of international dialogue and cross-cultural empathy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Arshin Adib-Moghaddam is the author of The International Politics of the Persian Gulf: A Cultural Genealogy (London: Routledge, 2006). He teaches international relations at Oxford University. MRZine has published his "The Muslim in the Mirror" (23 Feb. 2006); "Persian Atoms: Enriching Facts, Diverting Fiction" (26 April 2006); "Iraq, Iran, and the New World Order" (25 May 2006); "The Muslim Presence in the Racist Mind" (15 June 2006); "Palestine Sans Frontières" (18 July 2006); "Reflections on Arab and Iranian Ultra-Nationalism" (20 November 2006); and "Uprising against the 'War on Terror': The Danger of US Foreign Policy to International Security" (16 February 2007) . Consult Adib-Moghaddam's Web site for his upcoming publications.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments (3)| Trackback | Print
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Exclusive: Immigrant moves back 'home' to Teheran
Orly Halpern, The Jerusalem Post. 11/03/2005
Ishak can't wait to get "home" to Teheran.
After he immigrated to Israel two years ago, said the short man with dark circles under his eyes, his life became increasingly miserable.
Standing and fretting inside his empty shop on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda, Ishak (not his real name), a 51-year-old Jewish-Iranian who is in Israel now only for a final visit, said the jewelry shop he opened here never sold anything, the renters to whom he leased a property did not pay and his heart began to fail him from the stress of monthly mortgage payments and no income.
So 10 months ago gray-haired Ishak gave up on the Zionist dream and began to move his family and belongings back to Iran. He filled some of his numerous suitcases and trunks with the Persian carpets, silverware, and home decorations he came here with, and flew to Turkey with his two sons. There they sent their new Israeli passports by express mail back to his daughter in Israel. Then they took out their Islamic Republic of Iran passports and boarded a flight to Teheran.
When he arrived, his Muslim friends were incredulous.
"I have a lot of Muslim friends and they all knew I'd moved to Israel," he said. "They asked me, 'Why did you come back?'" His Jewish friends in Iran already knew the answer.
Despite the declaration last week by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel must be wiped off the map, the Shihab missiles displayed in Teheran with "Israel" painted on them, the broadcasting of anti-Semitic films on national television and the much-publicized trials of 13 Jewish Iranians on spy charges, Ishak insists that life in Iran is far better for Jews than life in Israel.
"If you have problems there, people help you - and they know you are Jewish," said Ishak, who has now briefly returned to Israel to sell his shop and leave for good. "But here, everyone is looking out for himself. You can't trust anybody."
Ishak is not the only recent immigrant who prefers his Islamic birthplace to his Jewish homeland. Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and Rehov Ben-Yehuda are lined with shopkeepers originally from Iran who say they are desperate to go back - some to visit, some to live.
And while most outsiders might believe that routine contact between the citizens of the two sworn enemies is impossible, in fact, not only are the phone lines between Teheran and Tel Aviv used actively, but so also are flight routes via Istanbul.
Jewish Iranians travel frequently to Israel. To avoid getting the Iranians in trouble back in their home country, Israeli border authorities do not stamp entry visas into their passports. As with journalists, the entry visa is stamped on a separate slip of paper, which is later thrown away upon exit from the Zionist state.
"My parents came for a visit and left two months ago," said Avi, who owns a shoe store on Jaffa Road. But the elderly couple has no intention of moving here.
"The Jews there live very well," he explained. "When [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini got in power he said there is a difference between Persian Jews who are from Moussa (Moses) and Zionist Jews."
Avi acknowledges that initially Jews were not allowed to travel. "No one was," he said. "But now it's no problem."
Summertime is the most popular season for travel but sometimes Iranians come for just a wedding.
At Avi's, all the shoe salesmen are Iranian Jews. One of them is expecting his mother-in-law back in Israel from a two-month visit to Teheran. Meanwhile, his wife speaks to her mother regularly. "My mother-in-law buys calling cards there for $10 and they speak one hour."
But even more curious is the cooperation of Iranian authorities in allowing Iranian-Israelis who don't have an Iranian passport to visit the country of their birth and roots.
"My uncle's cousin had not been in Iran for over 20 years," said David, who runs a gift shop on Rehov Ben-Yehuda with his brother and parents and asked that his last name not be printed because he does not want the Iranian government to know who he is. "He went to the Iranian embassy in Turkey and told them, 'I am Persian and I am now Israeli. I want to go back to Iran. If you give me a passport great, if not that's fine, too. And they gave him one,'" said David, who is considering trying the method.
The 30-year-old is afraid to ask and he thinks he won't get one because he left Iran by illegally crossing the border into Pakistan some 15 years ago without a passport. But he, too, is dying to go back to Iran.
"I love the country, I don't like the people," stressed the young man dressed in jeans and a black kippa who said he came to Israel because of Zionism.
"I thought that here it was good. I thought that all the Jews leave their doors unlocked and no one stole. But the Israeli people are not cultured. They are rude and disrespectful. In Iran people trust each other and when they give their word they keep it. Here you need a lawyer to get anyone to keep their promise."
Moussa (also not his real name) is a 42-year-old clothing salesman on Jaffa Road who came to Israel in the 1970s when he was 10. His family members own four shops along the street. Many from his family travel frequently between the two enemy states. "They come and go and do business," he said.
Many of the Iranian-Israelis said that after former moderate president Muhammad Khatami got in power in 1997 the government turned a blind eye to the travel. Now some fear that may change since hardline president Ahmadinejad took over in August.
"I'm scared," said Moussa. "Especially after what Ahmedinejad said. He's a new leader and he wants to show off like a peacock. We don't know what it will be like now."
Ishak can't wait to get "home" to Teheran.
After he immigrated to Israel two years ago, said the short man with dark circles under his eyes, his life became increasingly miserable.
Standing and fretting inside his empty shop on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda, Ishak (not his real name), a 51-year-old Jewish-Iranian who is in Israel now only for a final visit, said the jewelry shop he opened here never sold anything, the renters to whom he leased a property did not pay and his heart began to fail him from the stress of monthly mortgage payments and no income.
So 10 months ago gray-haired Ishak gave up on the Zionist dream and began to move his family and belongings back to Iran. He filled some of his numerous suitcases and trunks with the Persian carpets, silverware, and home decorations he came here with, and flew to Turkey with his two sons. There they sent their new Israeli passports by express mail back to his daughter in Israel. Then they took out their Islamic Republic of Iran passports and boarded a flight to Teheran.
When he arrived, his Muslim friends were incredulous.
"I have a lot of Muslim friends and they all knew I'd moved to Israel," he said. "They asked me, 'Why did you come back?'" His Jewish friends in Iran already knew the answer.
Despite the declaration last week by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel must be wiped off the map, the Shihab missiles displayed in Teheran with "Israel" painted on them, the broadcasting of anti-Semitic films on national television and the much-publicized trials of 13 Jewish Iranians on spy charges, Ishak insists that life in Iran is far better for Jews than life in Israel.
"If you have problems there, people help you - and they know you are Jewish," said Ishak, who has now briefly returned to Israel to sell his shop and leave for good. "But here, everyone is looking out for himself. You can't trust anybody."
Ishak is not the only recent immigrant who prefers his Islamic birthplace to his Jewish homeland. Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and Rehov Ben-Yehuda are lined with shopkeepers originally from Iran who say they are desperate to go back - some to visit, some to live.
And while most outsiders might believe that routine contact between the citizens of the two sworn enemies is impossible, in fact, not only are the phone lines between Teheran and Tel Aviv used actively, but so also are flight routes via Istanbul.
Jewish Iranians travel frequently to Israel. To avoid getting the Iranians in trouble back in their home country, Israeli border authorities do not stamp entry visas into their passports. As with journalists, the entry visa is stamped on a separate slip of paper, which is later thrown away upon exit from the Zionist state.
"My parents came for a visit and left two months ago," said Avi, who owns a shoe store on Jaffa Road. But the elderly couple has no intention of moving here.
"The Jews there live very well," he explained. "When [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini got in power he said there is a difference between Persian Jews who are from Moussa (Moses) and Zionist Jews."
Avi acknowledges that initially Jews were not allowed to travel. "No one was," he said. "But now it's no problem."
Summertime is the most popular season for travel but sometimes Iranians come for just a wedding.
At Avi's, all the shoe salesmen are Iranian Jews. One of them is expecting his mother-in-law back in Israel from a two-month visit to Teheran. Meanwhile, his wife speaks to her mother regularly. "My mother-in-law buys calling cards there for $10 and they speak one hour."
But even more curious is the cooperation of Iranian authorities in allowing Iranian-Israelis who don't have an Iranian passport to visit the country of their birth and roots.
"My uncle's cousin had not been in Iran for over 20 years," said David, who runs a gift shop on Rehov Ben-Yehuda with his brother and parents and asked that his last name not be printed because he does not want the Iranian government to know who he is. "He went to the Iranian embassy in Turkey and told them, 'I am Persian and I am now Israeli. I want to go back to Iran. If you give me a passport great, if not that's fine, too. And they gave him one,'" said David, who is considering trying the method.
The 30-year-old is afraid to ask and he thinks he won't get one because he left Iran by illegally crossing the border into Pakistan some 15 years ago without a passport. But he, too, is dying to go back to Iran.
"I love the country, I don't like the people," stressed the young man dressed in jeans and a black kippa who said he came to Israel because of Zionism.
"I thought that here it was good. I thought that all the Jews leave their doors unlocked and no one stole. But the Israeli people are not cultured. They are rude and disrespectful. In Iran people trust each other and when they give their word they keep it. Here you need a lawyer to get anyone to keep their promise."
Moussa (also not his real name) is a 42-year-old clothing salesman on Jaffa Road who came to Israel in the 1970s when he was 10. His family members own four shops along the street. Many from his family travel frequently between the two enemy states. "They come and go and do business," he said.
Many of the Iranian-Israelis said that after former moderate president Muhammad Khatami got in power in 1997 the government turned a blind eye to the travel. Now some fear that may change since hardline president Ahmadinejad took over in August.
"I'm scared," said Moussa. "Especially after what Ahmedinejad said. He's a new leader and he wants to show off like a peacock. We don't know what it will be like now."
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Interpol calls for arrests in Argentine bombing
Associated Press 03/15/2007
(http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/15/interpol.argentina.ap/index.html)
PARIS, France (AP) -- Interpol plans to issue international requests for the arrest of five prominent Iranians and a Lebanese militant in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina, the international police agency said Thursday.
Interpol turned down Argentina's request for help in the arrests of three other former top Iranians, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Argentina requested help from Interpol after Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral said last year he was seeking the detentions of Rafsanjani and eight others. Argentine prosecutors have alleged that the attack was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
Iran has denied any involvement in the bombing and said it would oppose any attempt to detain Iranian citizens. Both countries are members of Lyon, France-based Interpol.
Interpol said it would issue "red notices" for the Iranians on March 31 unless either Iran or Argentina appeals the decision. In that case, none would be issued, and the matter could go before Interpol's general assembly in November.
A "red notice" is an Interpol request that a wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition. While the measure cannot force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, people with red-notice status appear on Interpol's equivalent of a most-wanted list.
The six people that Interpol plans to issue red notices for include former Iranian intelligence chief Ali Fallahijan and a Lebanese militant, Imad Mughniyah.
Interpol declined to issue red notices for Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and the former ambassador of Iran in Buenos Aires, Hadi Soleimanpour.
Eighty-five people were killed and 200 wounded when a van packed with explosives blew up outside the seven-story Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
(http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/03/15/interpol.argentina.ap/index.html)
PARIS, France (AP) -- Interpol plans to issue international requests for the arrest of five prominent Iranians and a Lebanese militant in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Argentina, the international police agency said Thursday.
Interpol turned down Argentina's request for help in the arrests of three other former top Iranians, including former President Hashemi Rafsanjani.
Argentina requested help from Interpol after Argentine Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral said last year he was seeking the detentions of Rafsanjani and eight others. Argentine prosecutors have alleged that the attack was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
Iran has denied any involvement in the bombing and said it would oppose any attempt to detain Iranian citizens. Both countries are members of Lyon, France-based Interpol.
Interpol said it would issue "red notices" for the Iranians on March 31 unless either Iran or Argentina appeals the decision. In that case, none would be issued, and the matter could go before Interpol's general assembly in November.
A "red notice" is an Interpol request that a wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition. While the measure cannot force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, people with red-notice status appear on Interpol's equivalent of a most-wanted list.
The six people that Interpol plans to issue red notices for include former Iranian intelligence chief Ali Fallahijan and a Lebanese militant, Imad Mughniyah.
Interpol declined to issue red notices for Rafsanjani, former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati and the former ambassador of Iran in Buenos Aires, Hadi Soleimanpour.
Eighty-five people were killed and 200 wounded when a van packed with explosives blew up outside the seven-story Jewish community center in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Dissent in Iran over Holocaust conference
International Herald Tribune. Nazila Fathi. February 26, 2007
(http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/news/holocaust.php)
TEHRAN: A group of Iranian academics, writers and artists has issued a statement to denounce the Holocaust conference held in Tehran in December, calling it a move that endangered peace and hurt the reputations of Iranian academics.
The Iranian government organized a two-day gathering in December, billed it as a legitimate conference on the historical record and invited notorious Holocaust deniers and white supremacists from around the world. Among those from the United States was a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke.
The Foreign Ministry held the event after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed several times that the Holocaust was a myth and was invented by Zionists to justify the establishment of Israel.
The statement criticizing the conference was signed by 23 academics, writers and translators, many of whom live outside Iran. It was sent to The New York Times and circulated on the Internet last week. It argued that the gathering lacked academic credentials and was held for propaganda purposes.
The statement said that the conference harmed the academic image of Iranian universities and provided a pretext for warmongers in the region. It added that the gathering perpetuated the immoral stance of Holocaust denial, a position that "seriously endangers" the "peaceful cohabitation of human beings."
"The extensive material evidence, the confessions made in the Nuremberg trials and other trials that took place after the war and the testimonies of the survivors established the veracity of the accounts beyond any doubt," the statement said.
"The accuracy of the accounts has been acknowledged by many academic, political and religious authorities, including the Catholic Church."
The statement added that "talking inconsiderately" about the Holocaust can only be described as rubbing salt into a historical wound. "Those who perpetuate the discourse on Holocaust denial ignore the feelings of the people directly affected by this event," it said.
The statement also argued that denying the Holocaust would not help the Palestinian cause.
"No matter what political position we adopt regarding the creation of Israel and its further expansion, the historical evidence for the Holocaust remains intact," it said.
"The Palestinians, like all other nations, have a right to enjoy their livelihood in their own independent state. This right has nothing to do with the denial or acknowledgment of the Holocaust," the statement added.
Given the risk of harassment and repression for those who criticize the government, dissent to the conference has been slow to build. But reformist politicians and some members of Parliament have voiced their outrage over the consequences of holding the event.
Akbar Alami, the parliamentary representative from the northwestern city of Tabriz, asked Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to appear in Parliament in January to explain the ministry's plans for decreasing tensions with the West and accused Ahmadinejad's foreign policy of being reckless.
"Why did we have to bring up the issue of the Holocaust, which belongs to 60 years ago," Alami asked the foreign minister.
Mehdi Karoubi, a politician who was once a speaker of Parliament, criticized the conference last week, saying it had led to a resolution in the United Nations that reflected badly on Iran.
"Have we ever asked how questioning the Holocaust has harmed us and what prices we had to pay for it?" he said in a speech at Tehran University last week, the ILNA Labor press agency reported.
The United Nations reacted to the Tehran conference by adopting a resolution without a vote that rejected any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event.
(http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/news/holocaust.php)
TEHRAN: A group of Iranian academics, writers and artists has issued a statement to denounce the Holocaust conference held in Tehran in December, calling it a move that endangered peace and hurt the reputations of Iranian academics.
The Iranian government organized a two-day gathering in December, billed it as a legitimate conference on the historical record and invited notorious Holocaust deniers and white supremacists from around the world. Among those from the United States was a former Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke.
The Foreign Ministry held the event after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed several times that the Holocaust was a myth and was invented by Zionists to justify the establishment of Israel.
The statement criticizing the conference was signed by 23 academics, writers and translators, many of whom live outside Iran. It was sent to The New York Times and circulated on the Internet last week. It argued that the gathering lacked academic credentials and was held for propaganda purposes.
The statement said that the conference harmed the academic image of Iranian universities and provided a pretext for warmongers in the region. It added that the gathering perpetuated the immoral stance of Holocaust denial, a position that "seriously endangers" the "peaceful cohabitation of human beings."
"The extensive material evidence, the confessions made in the Nuremberg trials and other trials that took place after the war and the testimonies of the survivors established the veracity of the accounts beyond any doubt," the statement said.
"The accuracy of the accounts has been acknowledged by many academic, political and religious authorities, including the Catholic Church."
The statement added that "talking inconsiderately" about the Holocaust can only be described as rubbing salt into a historical wound. "Those who perpetuate the discourse on Holocaust denial ignore the feelings of the people directly affected by this event," it said.
The statement also argued that denying the Holocaust would not help the Palestinian cause.
"No matter what political position we adopt regarding the creation of Israel and its further expansion, the historical evidence for the Holocaust remains intact," it said.
"The Palestinians, like all other nations, have a right to enjoy their livelihood in their own independent state. This right has nothing to do with the denial or acknowledgment of the Holocaust," the statement added.
Given the risk of harassment and repression for those who criticize the government, dissent to the conference has been slow to build. But reformist politicians and some members of Parliament have voiced their outrage over the consequences of holding the event.
Akbar Alami, the parliamentary representative from the northwestern city of Tabriz, asked Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki to appear in Parliament in January to explain the ministry's plans for decreasing tensions with the West and accused Ahmadinejad's foreign policy of being reckless.
"Why did we have to bring up the issue of the Holocaust, which belongs to 60 years ago," Alami asked the foreign minister.
Mehdi Karoubi, a politician who was once a speaker of Parliament, criticized the conference last week, saying it had led to a resolution in the United Nations that reflected badly on Iran.
"Have we ever asked how questioning the Holocaust has harmed us and what prices we had to pay for it?" he said in a speech at Tehran University last week, the ILNA Labor press agency reported.
The United Nations reacted to the Tehran conference by adopting a resolution without a vote that rejected any denial of the Holocaust as a historical event.
36 Questions About The Holocaust in Farsi
http://www.wiesenthal.com/atf/cf/%7BDFD2AAC1-2ADE-428A-9263-35234229D8D8%7D/36QUESTIONSINFARSI.PDF
Monday, March 12, 2007
Israeli Diplomats Reach Out to L.A. Iranian Media
The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. 09/08/06
(http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/searchview.php?id=16427)
By Karmel Melamed
Representatives from Southern California-based Persian-language satellite radio stations and television shows attended a special press conference on Aug. 28, held for them at Los Angeles' Israeli consulate, the first public interaction between the Israeli government and local Persian-language media in more than 25 years.
The local Iranian media outlets are owned and operated by expatriate Iranian Muslims, and the gathering was a move by the consulate to reach out directly to the people of Iran.
"I received feedback from a lot of channels in the Iranian media for interviews, so I saw the desire by them to understand what we think and we believe, so we setup this event specifically to address their questions," said Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch.
Local Persian Jewish activists were instrumental in helping to connect the Iranian media with the consulate for the press conference, as many Persian Jews still share common cultural and linguistic ties with other Iranian groups in Southern California.
"This is indeed something that has never been done before in this city where there is a community of Iranian and a center of Iranian media outside of Iran," said George Haroonian, a Persian Jewish activist who helped organize the press conference with the consulate.
"We need to be the connector between the people of Israel and people of Iran," Haroonian said.
During the nearly two-hour press conference, Danoch responded to reporters' questions about the aftermath of the war with Hezbollah and addressed the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for Israel's destruction.
"The most important message for us to get across is that the government of Israel and Israelis have nothing against the Iranian people or Islam," Danoch said. "But we will not tolerate the extremist expressions of that president of Iran".
Since the collapse in 1979 of the regime of the late shah of Iran, many Iranian Muslim politicians and Western-educated professionals have been among the large groups of Iranians in the United States and, particularly, Los Angeles. During the past two decades, these communities have established media outlets in Southern California that oppose the current government in Iran, and regularly broadcast news and political commentary to Iran through satellite radio and television, as well as via the internet, much of it in an attempt to help bring down the regime there.
Southern California's Iranian Muslim media has also frequently voiced criticism of Israel, as well, and the consulate's outreach at this event was an attempt to counter that. On the part of the Iranian media, this was one more way to take a jab at the regime.
"This is an important event for us because we don't want our viewers to receive one-sided bias news from the media in Iran and get brainwashed -- we must show the other side," said Afshin Gorgin, a reporter for the Iranian news program on the Voice of America satellite television. "Here they get to see and hear the views of the other side directly from a representative of Israel".
Members of the Iranian media in attendance said the press conference was later broadcast in its entirety into Iran, which has a population of nearly 70 million, many of whom said they oppose their government's support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, but are afraid to express their views.
"I receive phone calls from listeners in Iran, and they say we do not have a problem with Israel, and we do not have border disputes with Israel," said Siavash Azari, a news commentator on KRSI, a Beverly Hills-based satellite radio station that broadcasts daily into Iran.
The Iranian Muslim media stepped up interest in issues concerning Israel when, late last year, Iranian President Ahmadinejad called Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." In response, they condemned Ahmadinejad and organized a pro-Israel rally in Westwood, which drew nearly 2,000 Iranians from various religions.
"We spoke out against him because his words were utterly absurd for anyone to say, and we would have spoken out against such statements if they were made by any other leader," said Reza Fazeli, a news commentator for the satellite television station Pars TV.
Earlier this month, Israeli Deputy Consul General Yaron Gamburg was also interviewed by Hossien Hejazi, an Iranian news commentator at KIRN-AM. 670, a Persian-language radio station based in Hollywood.
In January, when Ahmadinejad denied the existence of the Holocaust, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, working with Iranian Jewish leaders, invited Iranian journalists to tour the Museum of Tolerance in an effort to educate them about the Holocaust so that they could send information back to Iran on the topic.
The January event, as well as the recent press conference, seem to be having the desired effect of opening up dialogue. At the conference, Danoch offered to make himself available for interviews and said the consulate would help to get their message across to the people of Iran in any way possible.
Karmel Melamed is an internationally published freelance journalist based in Southern California.
(http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/searchview.php?id=16427)
By Karmel Melamed
Representatives from Southern California-based Persian-language satellite radio stations and television shows attended a special press conference on Aug. 28, held for them at Los Angeles' Israeli consulate, the first public interaction between the Israeli government and local Persian-language media in more than 25 years.
The local Iranian media outlets are owned and operated by expatriate Iranian Muslims, and the gathering was a move by the consulate to reach out directly to the people of Iran.
"I received feedback from a lot of channels in the Iranian media for interviews, so I saw the desire by them to understand what we think and we believe, so we setup this event specifically to address their questions," said Israeli Consul General Ehud Danoch.
Local Persian Jewish activists were instrumental in helping to connect the Iranian media with the consulate for the press conference, as many Persian Jews still share common cultural and linguistic ties with other Iranian groups in Southern California.
"This is indeed something that has never been done before in this city where there is a community of Iranian and a center of Iranian media outside of Iran," said George Haroonian, a Persian Jewish activist who helped organize the press conference with the consulate.
"We need to be the connector between the people of Israel and people of Iran," Haroonian said.
During the nearly two-hour press conference, Danoch responded to reporters' questions about the aftermath of the war with Hezbollah and addressed the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's repeated calls for Israel's destruction.
"The most important message for us to get across is that the government of Israel and Israelis have nothing against the Iranian people or Islam," Danoch said. "But we will not tolerate the extremist expressions of that president of Iran".
Since the collapse in 1979 of the regime of the late shah of Iran, many Iranian Muslim politicians and Western-educated professionals have been among the large groups of Iranians in the United States and, particularly, Los Angeles. During the past two decades, these communities have established media outlets in Southern California that oppose the current government in Iran, and regularly broadcast news and political commentary to Iran through satellite radio and television, as well as via the internet, much of it in an attempt to help bring down the regime there.
Southern California's Iranian Muslim media has also frequently voiced criticism of Israel, as well, and the consulate's outreach at this event was an attempt to counter that. On the part of the Iranian media, this was one more way to take a jab at the regime.
"This is an important event for us because we don't want our viewers to receive one-sided bias news from the media in Iran and get brainwashed -- we must show the other side," said Afshin Gorgin, a reporter for the Iranian news program on the Voice of America satellite television. "Here they get to see and hear the views of the other side directly from a representative of Israel".
Members of the Iranian media in attendance said the press conference was later broadcast in its entirety into Iran, which has a population of nearly 70 million, many of whom said they oppose their government's support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, but are afraid to express their views.
"I receive phone calls from listeners in Iran, and they say we do not have a problem with Israel, and we do not have border disputes with Israel," said Siavash Azari, a news commentator on KRSI, a Beverly Hills-based satellite radio station that broadcasts daily into Iran.
The Iranian Muslim media stepped up interest in issues concerning Israel when, late last year, Iranian President Ahmadinejad called Israel a "disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." In response, they condemned Ahmadinejad and organized a pro-Israel rally in Westwood, which drew nearly 2,000 Iranians from various religions.
"We spoke out against him because his words were utterly absurd for anyone to say, and we would have spoken out against such statements if they were made by any other leader," said Reza Fazeli, a news commentator for the satellite television station Pars TV.
Earlier this month, Israeli Deputy Consul General Yaron Gamburg was also interviewed by Hossien Hejazi, an Iranian news commentator at KIRN-AM. 670, a Persian-language radio station based in Hollywood.
In January, when Ahmadinejad denied the existence of the Holocaust, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, working with Iranian Jewish leaders, invited Iranian journalists to tour the Museum of Tolerance in an effort to educate them about the Holocaust so that they could send information back to Iran on the topic.
The January event, as well as the recent press conference, seem to be having the desired effect of opening up dialogue. At the conference, Danoch offered to make himself available for interviews and said the consulate would help to get their message across to the people of Iran in any way possible.
Karmel Melamed is an internationally published freelance journalist based in Southern California.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
How Jew-Friendly Persia Became Anti-Semitic Iran
Rachel Safier contributed to the reporting of this story. December, 2006
(http://www.momentmag.com/features/dec06/2006-12_Iran.html)
Copywrite Moment Magazine
The complex tale of how the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great—the world’s “first” Zionist—metamorphosed into the Israel-Hating nation we know today.
How Jew- Friendly Persia Became Anti-Semitic Iran
Abdol Hossein Sardari didn’t look like a hero. But when Paris fell to Hitler in June 1940, the 30-year-old Muslim—a dapper man with a receding hairline—took it upon himself to save Jews trapped inside Nazi-occupied France. Sardari, a junior official at the Iranian Embassy, had been left behind to look after the building when the Iranian ambassador and his staff abandoned Paris to establish residence in Vichy, the new home of France’s pro-Nazi government. Once the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sardari, without authorization from his government, made liberal use of the embassy’s supply of blank Iranian passports to assign new, non-Jewish identities to those in need, creating his own version of Schindler’s list.
Ibrahim Morady, who died this past June in Los Angeles at the age of 95, was one of the hundreds of Jews Sardari helped spare from deportation. “My father moved to Paris from Persia when he was six,” recounts his son Fred. Once Morady, a well-to-do rug merchant, had his new identity, he and two colleagues arranged to purchase false papers for about 100 other Jews of Iranian descent. Sardari served as their go-between, passing a bribe to a German official. In return, these Jews were given documents asserting that they were members of “some strange tribe in Iran—Djouguti, or something like that,” Fred Morady explains. “I asked my father: ‘What does this name mean?’ And he said: ‘They just made it up.’”
Sardari was not the only Iranian to protect Jews during World War II. The Iranian government itself kept its 3,000-year-old Jewish community out of Nazi reach. But his heroism is representative of Iran’s civilized and empathetic attitude toward its Jews.
This attitude stands in marked contrast to the vitriolic Islamic Republic of Iran led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that we hear and read about today. The world was stunned when Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran, felled an Iranian political giant—Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad, a radically conservative veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, an arm of the country’s Islamic establishment, quickly became a confrontational presence. Standing aside a banner that read “The World Without Zionism,” he whipped up a crowd of 4,000 students at an October 2005 conference in Tehran. “Our dear Imam ordered that the occupying regime in Al Quds be wiped off the face of the earth,” Ahmadinejad declared, referring to the late Ayatollah Khomeini and using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. “Anyone who would recognize this state has put his signature under the defeat of the Islamic world.”
The president also garnered world headlines when he publicly pronounced the Holocaust a “myth.” He has since slightly toned down his rhetoric, questioning why, if the Holocaust happened, the Palestinians should suffer for it. “Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of the war, the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants,” he told the United Nations General Assembly this September, ignoring the historic presence of Jews in Palestine.
When it comes to the Jews, Abdol Hossein Sardari and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represent the two faces of Iran. This Muslim, but not Arab, country that protected its Jews from the Holocaust now questions whether that genocide ever occurred. Once one of Israel’s closest Muslim allies, Iran now seeks to wipe the “Zionist entity” off the map. Tens of thousands of its Jews have left, yet Iran still retains the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country.
These contradictions have been embedded in the country’s history since ancient times. “In a sense, the story of the Jews of Iran is literally the Bible itself,” says Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. “The Bible says God asked Cyrus the Great [the founder of the Persian Empire] to build the Second Temple and Cyrus did. And Esther, a Jew married to the king of Persia, exposed the anti-Semitic, genocidal plot of Haman [his chief minister], and it was aborted. These two tendencies—the Hamanic anti-Semitic tendency and the tendency to welcome and accept the Jews and the rights that they have—have come all the way to the 21st century.”
The first charter of human rights ever set to paper predates the Magna Carta by some 1,700 years. It was drafted not within the baronial estates of medieval England but in a desert palace in the Middle East. “I announce that I will respect the traditions, customs and religions of the nations of my empire,” proclaimed Cyrus upon entering the gates of Babylon on the first day of spring in 539 B.C.E., “and never let any of my governors and subordinates look down on or insult them.”
Cyrus’s reign is warmly remembered as the Persian equivalent of Camelot, the mythical English court ruled by King Arthur. “Iranians take a lot of pride in the old civilization started by Cyrus,” says Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles. “He was extremely tolerant of other beliefs and ideologies; that, too, is an added measure of pride.”
Cyrus is also sometimes referred to as the world’s first Zionist. He righted the wrong done by King Nebuchadnezzar II 58 years earlier when he captured Jerusalem and Judah, and exiled thousands of Jews. “All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah,” Cyrus declared. He offered the Jews the opportunity to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple at Persian taxpayer expense. Many accepted, while others remained in Persia.
Typically depicted as a bearded warrior-king with broad shoulders in a military tunic and helmet, Cyrus was killed in 529 B.C.E. in a battle in northern Persia. The Jews fared less well under his son, Cambyses II, who suspended construction of the Temple. But a few years later, work was resumed under King Darius. According to the Bible, Esther was the beloved wife of Darius’s son. Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus.
Overall, life was good for the Jewish community under the early Persian kings. “From what we know, the Jews were well trusted and tolerated,” says Houman Sarshar, a scholar with the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History who edited an anthology called Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews. He points to the prominence of Jewish prophets in the Persian Empire and notes that Ezra held the respected job of scribe in the royal court. “The Jews weren’t seen as a threat to anyone else’s way of life,” Sarshar says. But with the advent of Islam their world would change.
A battle in 642 C.E., which Arabs hail as the “victory of victories,” brought an end to the golden age of Persian Jews. Some 30,000 battle-hardened Arab Muslims assembled at Nehavend, along the western Persian border, and defeated the 150,000-man Persian army, ending 2,000 years of Persian independence. The caliphate was then controlled from Damascus and Baghdad.
Although Muslims revered Jews as “the people of the Book,” the imposition of Islam led to second-class citizenship for Persia’s minorities—Jews, Zoroastrians, and Armenian and Assyrian Christians. “After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion, Muslim leaders were required to find a way of handling non-Muslims, who remained in the majority in many areas,” says Nahid Pirnazar, who teaches Iranian studies at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles and is founder and director of the House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts Foundation. As a way of both protecting and discriminating against minorities, Islamic leaders came up with the notion of dhimma, or protected minorities. “The dhimmi were required to pay an extra tax but usually were unmolested,” says Pirnazar. “This compares well to the treatment meted out to non-Christians in Christian Europe.”
Over time, the list of hardships and humiliations grew. The Pact of Umar, named after the reigning leader from 634 to 644 C.E., established harsher laws for non-Muslims. Jews were barred from government office and the military, and forbidden to ride on white donkeys, which were seen as symbols of cleanliness. They were forced to wear yellow armbands, while Christians had to don blue ones.
After the Mongols invaded Persia in the second half of the 13th century, the standing of the country’s Jews improved dramatically. “This period was the highlight of the life of Jews in Islamic Iran,” says Pirnazar. “The Mongol rulers at the time were secular, not yet converted to Islam, so Jews had a chance to penetrate into socio-political and cultural levels.”
This didn’t last. Treatment of minorities deteriorated after the Safavids took power in the 1500s, imposing their hard-line brand of Shia Islam and ushering in “the worst era of Persian-Jewish relations,” says political scientist Eliz Sanasarian of the University of Southern California, author of Religious Minorities in Iran.
The Safavids forcibly converted Iran’s Sunni Muslims to Shia Islam and introduced the concept of “ritual pollution,” which further segregated minorities from their neighbors. Because nonbelievers were deemed spiritually and physically contagious, Jews were barred from leaving their houses when it rained, for fear the water would transmit their impurities. A Jew who entered a Muslim home had to sit on a special rug and could not be offered tea, food or a water pipe, since any object touched by a Jew could no longer be used by a Muslim.
Safavid rule came to an end in 1736, but the Muslim perception of Jews as impure remained. Occasional violent outbreaks, reminiscent of the blood libels and pogroms carried out in Europe, punctuated the next two centuries of Qajar Dynasty rule. In one incident in the northeastern town of Mashhad in 1839, an ailing Jewish woman was told to use dogs’ blood to cure a certain malady. A rumor quickly spread that she had tried the cure on a Shia holiday, deliberately insulting the sect. Jews were attacked and some three dozen killed, while the rest of the Jewish community was given the choice of conversion to Islam or death. Such bloody outbreaks persisted until the 20th century, when a new breed of shah came to power.
Born in the isolated northern Persian village of Alasht in 1878, Reza Pahlavi was the son of a military officer. Pahlavi was a man of powerful military bearing, most often portrayed with a thick handlebar mustache and a curved knife hanging from his scabbard. In 1925, he deposed the last shah of the Qajar Dynasty, giving himself the title Reza Shah.
For the first time in 1,400 years, an Iranian ruler reached out to his country’s Jews, bowing to the Torah to show his respect during a visit to the Jewish community of Isfahan, banning mass conversions and discouraging the idea that non-Muslims were unclean.
While respectful of Iran’s Jews, Reza Shah was fascinated by Nazi Germany. With German encouragement—and to emphasize that Persians are Aryan, not Arab—he changed the country’s name to Iran—from the old Persian “Arynam” or “of the Aryans.”
Iran, sitting of vast pools of oil, became of great strategic importance during World War II. Hitler coveted the oil, sparking fears of an Iranian-German alliance. As a result, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran in 1941, forcing the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Though the younger Pahlavi was seen as a playboy more interested in fast cars than in governing, he had a bold vision for his nation.
A man of grandiose self-image, the new Shah viewed himself as heir to Cyrus the Great and as such was a friend of the Jews. Under his rule, the community “enjoyed almost total cultural and religious autonomy, experienced unprecedented economic progress and had more or less the same political rights as their Muslim compatriots,” says David Menashri, a Tel Aviv University expert on Iran.
To protect them from the Nazis, Iran assured the Germans that its Jews were fully assimilated Iranians called kalimis—a term derived from the accolade for Moses in Koran. The Nazis, still more interested in Iran’s oil, acquiesced, and also turned a blind eye to the fact that the Shah was providing an escape route for thousands of European Jewish refugees.
Rachel Meer, a Jewish Iranian expatriate who lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, remembers her father telling her the story of how, during World War II, he helped Jews pass through Iran. “He purchased a huge army tent to protect these refugees,” she says. “When he married my mother, the Jews traveling through were invited to the wedding.” Later, when great numbers of Iraqi Jews left their homes for the newly born state of Israel, they too were granted passage, says Shaul Bakhash, a veteran Mideast analyst at George Mason University in Virginia. “Iran was one of the few countries that did not charge the Zionist organization for this permission.”
At first Iran had opposed the partition of Palestine, says Trita Parsi, author of the forthcoming book Treacherous Triangle—The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States. “But once it was done, Iran and Israel realized they had common interests and common enemies.” In the 1960s, Iran developed a military relationship with Israel and Israeli technicians assisted Iran with agricultural projects. Both nations, wary of Arab domination of the Middle East, saw value in creating a non-Arab “outer ring,” consisting of Iran, Israel, Turkey and Ethiopia.
With the exception of Turkey, Iran stood virtually alone in the Middle East in its acceptance of the state of Israel. But in doing so, the Shah walked a fine line. As Iran’s covert ties with Israel became public, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a campaign against the Shah. At home, his efforts to westernize Iran faced opposition from mullahs—Iran’s Islamic clerics—on the right and intellectuals on the left, all of whom condemned his government as repressive.
After Israel seized and occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, the Iranian clergy’s antipathy toward Israel increased sharply. “1967 changed many minds,” says Menashri. He recounts the story of the 200-rial banknote to illustrate the Shah’s precarious position.
It was 1974, a time of great tension: Arab oil-producing nations had imposed an oil embargo on the West, but the Shah, wishing to maintain his strategic alliance with Washington and Jerusalem, refused to stop supplying them with oil. The Arabs were incensed. What seemed like routine government business—the replenishment of currency by issuing 10 million new 200-rial notes—quickly grew into a crisis. On the day the new currency was to be distributed to banks, attention fell on a six-pointed star on the back of the bill. Though the star was of a traditional Iranian design, rumors spread that the currency had been printed in Israel. Fearing rebellion, the government withdrew the notes that same day.
Protests against the Shah continued to escalate and the storm clouds of revolution gathered. “The revolution did not have Islamic overtones at first—it was a revolution of the intelligentsia and it was pro-democracy,” recalls Esther’s Children author Sarshar. “But, very quickly, in about two or three months, all the craziness started.” While many Jews were sympathetic to the protestors, the community was seen as an ally to the Shah and part of the ruling establishment—thus an enemy of the revolution.
The most influential of the revolutionaries was a religious leader with a flowing beard who sat brooding in exile in a Parisian suburb: Ayatollah Rohollah Mousavi Khomeini. Born in 1902 near the holy city of Qom, Khomeini had been exiled from Iran in 1964 for condemning the Shah’s modernization policies. After 13 years in Iraq, he moved to France, where he continued to challenge the regime. Via smuggled audiotapes of his sermons, he fanned the swelling protests against the Shah’s regime from afar and inspired Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
By 1978, widespread strikes had led to the collapse of the economy and, on December 12, two million protestors gathered on Tehran’s Azadi Square. On January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran into exile. Two weeks later, enormous crowds greeted Khomeini’s triumphant return to Tehran on a chartered Air France airliner. That November 4, a mob of angry students, spurred on by his denouncement of the United States as an enemy of Islam stormed the American Embassy, taking 66 Americans hostage. The demonstrators included a young rabble-rouser named Ahmadinejad who also advocated seizing the Soviet Embassy. A new age of Islamic fundamentalism for Iran had begun, spelling great uncertainty for its 80,000 Jews.
As a skinny, brainy Tehran teenager in the 1970s, Roya Hakakian was one of many young Jews who supported the Islamic Revolution despite the nervous admonitions of their parents. For them, participation was not only an adventure but affirmation they were fully assimilated Iranians. Hakakian, now a 39-year-old mother in Connecticut, has written a memoir, Journey From the Land of No, that provides a glimpse into the turmoil that followed the Revolution.
Initially, the Islamists were too busy imposing their rules on society at large to worry about the Jews. “People weren’t permitted to laugh on the streets on certain national mourning days; it was a crime to be with a boy you weren’t related to; we had to cover our heads and we couldn’t hold hands,” Hakakian recalls. Women couldn’t appear in public without a veil and garments like the chador that revealed not a clue of femininity. Women also lost the right to divorce, and most engineering and law schools began refusing them admission. People could be arrested—and sometimes executed—for possession of books such as The Communist Manifesto, or music cassettes. “Those were the Khmer Rouge days,” Hakakian says.
Hakakian’s first brush with the new order came when she and a few friends went for a hike in a public park in the Alborz, part of a mountain range outside Tehran. Encountering a sign that said the mountain was “closed,” they giggled and ignored it. As they ascended, some of the girls loosened their mandatory head scarves. Soon, they were stopped by a teenager in army fatigues toting a Kalashnikov, who demanded to know what they were doing. Three other uniformed men joined him and took the group to a detention center. There, a policeman found a Jewish prayerbook in Hakakian’s pocketbook; ironically, that broke the tension. “Jews are cowards,” one of the uniformed men said. “They never get mixed up in politics. And we thought we’d got ourselves a pack of leftists or royalists.” The girls were sent home.
“For once in Jewish history,” says Hakakian wryly, “Jewish stereotypes came to our aid.”
In the evenings, she and her friends would watch the show trials on television. Former leaders of the Shah’s government, stripped of their dignity and wearing cardboard signs with their names around their necks, were charged with offenses like “corruption on earth,” and taken to be shot. In March 1979, the spectacle hit close to home. Habib Elghanian, an industrialist who led the Jewish community council, was accused of corruption, contacts with Israel and Zionism, “friendship with the enemies of God,” “warring with God and his emissaries” and “economic imperialism.” He was tried by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal whose members kept their backs to him, refusing to look a traitor in the face.
Shot by firing squad on May 8, Elghanian was the first private citizen in Iran to be executed by the tribunal. His real crime was that he had failed to follow established custom for Jews and maintain a low profile. He had become a prominent figure under the Shah: While most well-off Iranian Jews were merchants with small businesses, Elghanian, owner of a huge conglomerate with interests in plastics, tile and aluminum, was a mogul. He even built a huge skyscraper in Tehran’s business district.
Within days of his execution, leaders of the Iranian Jewish community selected a delegation to meet with Khomeini. They chose two rabbis and four intellectuals, some of whom had joined the early street demonstrations against the Shah. Early one morning, the six men climbed into a station wagon and drove to Qom, one of them later told Hakakian’s father.
When they arrived, they were surprised to find that Khomeini, still not accustomed to the trappings of power, had cleared his calendar for their visit. As they seated themselves on folded blankets in a reception room, the Ayatollah entered. “Bism Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim,” one of the rabbis addressed him, invoking the name of God in Arabic in deference.
Khomeini began a long, roundabout discourse on subjects ranging from monotheism to how a man should choose a wife, to how to properly copulate, puzzling his Jewish audience. But when the Ayatollah completed his talk, his meaning became clear. “Moses would have nothing to do with these Pharaoh-like Zionists who run Israel,” he said. “And our Jews, the descendants of Moses, have nothing to do with them, either. We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless Zionists.”
When the Jewish delegation returned to Tehran, they spread the word: The Ayatollah had made Iran’s Jews kosher in the eyes of the Revolution. Soon all synagogues were painted with Khomeini’s decree and the Jews of Iran renounced Zionism.
True to its rhetoric, the Islamic Republic severed all official ties with Israel, but a clandestine relationship continued. Though Yasser Arafat was invited to Tehran and spoke of the plight of the mostly Sunni Palestinians, the Shia-Sunni divide and the fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization was largely secular meant that Iran’s support for the Palestinians was always lukewarm. Privately, Iran and Israel shared a common fear of the Arab states, especially Iraq. Israel sold Iran arms throughout the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
In 1985, in the middle of that war, then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres helped broker a deal between the Reagan Administration and Iran. The agreement allowed the sale of American arms, including anti-tank missiles, to the Islamic Republic. In exchange, the United States sought Iranian influence to free Western hostages held by Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group supported by Iran. (It also used the Iranian money to fund the anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.) When news of the deal surfaced, the Reagan Administration was embarrassed and politically damaged—both the United States and Israel had previously denied selling arms to the Islamic Republic.
At the end of the Cold War, Israel had a change of heart and concluded that Iran had become a major threat to its security. With Iraq severely weakened by its defeat in the Gulf War, Israeli strategists focused on Iran’s quest for long-range missiles and nuclear weapons as well as Iranian funding of Hezbollah. At press conferences in Jerusalem and during many visits to Washington in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin began emphasizing his desire to make peace with the Palestinians and with Syria because an even greater danger loomed: a nuclear Iran.
In 1977, Abbas Milani, then a political scientist at Tehran University, was arrested by the Shah’s police and thrown in jail. Considered a dangerous leftist academic, Milani shared a cell with some of the men who would become the leaders of the Islamic Revolution, including one of Ahmadinejad’s predecessors, Rafsanjani. Recalling his incarceration with the Islamists, he says bluntly, “I couldn’t stand them and they couldn’t stand me.”
Milani, who is not Jewish, left Iran for the United States in 1986, after the first waves of Iranian Jews fled the Revolution. He remembers that he first came to understand the special penalties that Iranian Jews faced under the mullahs when an Iranian friend, a prominent astrophysicist at Cambridge University, was invited to attend a conference in Tehran in 1982. The Iranian authorities had assured the young man he would have no problem returning to Britain, but because he was Jewish, they seized his passport upon his arrival and refused to return it.
“The poor guy had a wife and baby in England and they wouldn’t let him leave,” recalls Milani, who later discovered that the Islamic Republic had an unofficial policy of denying passports to young Iranian Jews to coerce their families into returning home after traveling abroad. They were in effect held hostage. “You can’t be a human being without feeling offended that this is happening in your name in your country,” says Milani.
Since the Islamic Revolution, approximately 75 percent of Iran’s Jews have fled the country. Estimates of the number that remain vary from 13,000 (the U.S. State Department’s 2005 International Religious Freedom Report, based on the most recent Iranian census) to the 25,000 to 30,000 claimed by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a non-profit group based in New Haven, Connecticut. The difference, the Center says, stems from the fact that many Jews in Iran do not wish to call attention to their heritage.
Whatever their number, Jews make up a tiny and vulnerable fraction of Iran’s population of nearly 70 million. “Personally, I am very much concerned about attacks on Iranian Jews,” says George Haroonian, former president of the Council of Iranian American Jewish Organizations (CIAJO), a group of outspoken Iranian expatriates that advocates for the rights of Iran’s remaining Jews. “It’s my viewpoint that Iranian Jews are in a very precarious situation.”
CIAJO reports that since 1979, 10 Jews in addition to Elghanian have been executed, six have been assassinated by the regime, two have died as a result of being held in custody, eight have died under suspicious circumstances and 12 have disappeared.
The situation has become increasingly worse, says Haroonian. He points to the trial in 2000 of 13 Jews from Shiraz and Isfahan accused of illegal contact with Israel, conspiracy to form an illegal organization and recruiting agents, which provoked vandalism and boycotts of Jewish businesses. “This was the largest wholesale attack against the Jewish community,” Haroonian says. Ten of those charged were found guilty, although espionage charges were dropped and an appeals court overturned all the convictions but those for illegal contacts with Israel. By 2003 all had been released from prison; 10 remain on probation.
Iran has seen a recent wave of anti-Semitic propaganda masquerading as anti-Zionism in print, on television and within the educational system, heavily influencing what Iranians—a quarter of them under 15—learn about their Jewish neighbors. Last February, Iran’s largest newspaper Hamshahri sponsored an international Holocaust cartoon contest that solicited sinister anti-Semitic entries that were widely displayed. In 2000, the Al-Manar television station aired a claymation special in which Jews were turned into apes and pigs. In 2004, the station Sahar 1 aired a weekly series Zahra’s Blue Eyes, also called For You, Palestine, in which the Israeli government is depicted as removing the blue eyes of Palestinian children for implantation into Jewish children. The claymation program “doesn’t say ‘all Jews are cursed,’” notes Yehudit Barsky, director of the Middle East and International Terrorism section of the American Jewish Committee. “It doesn’t say the Jewish person next door is evil. But still, the selection of this story is saying there were Jews who were evil and were punished. It’s a message of an insidious nature, not a direct nature.”
As the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism becomes increasingly blurred, the Jews who remain in Iran continue to stick to the Khomeini formula. “The Iranian Jewish community has gone out of its way to condemn the state of Israel, including the recent war with Hezbollah,” says Nahid Pirnazar. Catholic University law professor Marshall Breger, who visited Tehran and Shiraz in 2003, says that the Iranian Jews he met expressed regard and affection for the people of Israel, but were not political Zionists. “They were creating what I would call Judaism without Israel,” he explains. “It’s not unknown. People would say, ‘it’s no problem to be a Jew’ but the more observant wouldn’t wear a kippah outside because people in Iran know kippahs as a symbol of the Israel Defense Forces.”
While Iranian Jews are loath to speak out in defense of Israel, they do occasionally draw attention to other matters, such as anti-Jewish stereotypes in the media and the government’s campaign denying the Holocaust. Earlier this year, Haroun Yashayaei, chair of the Tehran Jewish community, sent an extremely rare letter of protest to Ahmadinejad, expressing concern about the president’s statements about the Holocaust. His objections were seconded by Maurice Motamed, who holds the one seat allotted to Jews in the country’s 290-member parliament.
“When our president spoke about the Holocaust, I considered it my duty as a Jew to speak about this issue,” Motamed told the British newspaper The Guardian in a June 2006 interview. “The biggest disaster in human history is based on tens of thousands of films and documents. I said these remarks are a big insult to the whole Jewish society in Iran and the whole world.”
Motamed, an engineer, made clear to The Guardian that although he took issue with Ahmadinejad over the Holocaust, he supports the president on other issues, including the standoff with the United States, Europe and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program. “I am an Iranian first and a Jew second,” he stressed. Although he acknowledged that Jews in Iran face problems, he assured readers that “there is no pressure on synagogues, no problems of desecration. I think the problem in Europe is worse than here. There is a lot of anti-Semitism in other countries.”
Similar sentiments can be found on the Jewish Central Committee of Iran’s website, iranjewish.com. “Iran’s Jewish community congratulates the achievement of nuclear fuel to the supreme leader, the Islamic Republic officials and all Iranians,” a May 2006 entry reads. “We celebrate the coincident of this victory with the New Year and the unforgettable days of Passover.”
Generally, Jews who have chosen to stay in Iran say that they are content and have no wish to leave their homeland. Tehran has more than a dozen active synagogues, and large groups of Jews also live in Shiraz and Isfahan. “Jews stay in Iran because they have their jobs, their lives and they love it,” says Shirin Taleh, a family therapist who left Iran in 2001 with her children to join the rest of her family in California and has visited twice since then, including a stay earlier this year.
Taleh believes her children will have more opportunities in the United States but dearly misses the country of her birth. She balks at the notion that Iran discriminates against Jews. “I would say ‘limitation’ rather than ‘discrimination.’ Two words, two meanings. Limitations for everyone, not just the Jewish community. We have some freedoms that the Muslims don’t have. Men and women mix. We are allowed to use alcohol for religious purposes. I don’t claim everything is OK. Everybody in the world abuses the name of the Jews. It’s an old problem between Muslims and Jews.” But, she makes clear, “I don’t know anything about political issues. I don’t want to go there.”
The decision to remain in Iran may not be measurable in rational ways. In 1998, when Manochehr Eliasi, Motamed’s predecessor as the Jewish member of parliament, was asked by a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter why Jews don’t leave, he burst into tears. “This is my birthplace,” Eliasi said. “I love its smell.”
In many ways, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the first non-cleric president in 24 years, is an exemplary product of modern Iran. Born to a modest family in a small village, he capitalized on high test scores to enter the civil engineering program at the Iran University of Science and Technology during the reign of the Shah. Later, he received his doctorate in a program funded by the Revolutionary Guards. With 12 percent of voters participating, he won the mayor’s office in 2003.
This 50-year-old newcomer to the world stage shocked analysts during his recent visit to the United Nations, not only by his hardline address to the General Assembly but by his seeming enjoyment of the limelight. He parried questions at a press conference, deftly handled CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a televised interview and spent 90 minutes jousting with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations. He stayed on message: The New York Times reported that Ahmadinejad spent 40 minutes of the session challenging evidence that the Holocaust took place. “I think we should allow more impartial studies to be done on this,” he said after hearing the account of a Jewish member of the Council who saw the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II. After the meeting, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft described Ahmadinejad to The New York Times as “a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution.”
Milani, who has followed Ahmadinejad’s rise to power, believes the Iranian president is truly anti-Semitic and is playing the Israel card to gain international attention and enhance his stature. “Had he not said those comments about the Holocaust and Israel, he would have come to the UN as a two-bit president of a despotic regime. Instead, they gave him a rock star treatment here, and it all translated into more power for him back home.”
“Not even a second-tier player” in Iran before the furor arose over his remarks, now he is world-renowned, says Milani. “The last month and a half, every time I have traveled and taken a cab, if the cab driver is Muslim and they get a whiff that I’m Iranian, they begin talking about Ahmadinejad as the man who is standing up to the Jews, to Israel and to America. It is working for him.”
Still, for all its bombastic rhetoric, Milani says he doesn’t believe the regime poses a direct threat to Iran’s Jews. “Is there a specific danger that Jews face? I don’t think so,” he says. “That kind of eliminationist anti-Semitism has never been part of Iranian history. Iranian anti-Semitism has been more or less limited to verbal pressure, verbal anti-Semitism, forcing Jews to live in ghettos, occasionally forcing them to wear the Star of David. Killings, pogroms—that’s European, not Iranian.”
Ahmadinejad’s statements about Israel and the Holocaust may have more to do with political pragmatism than anything else. A man of a secular background, he must show the mullahs that he is as staunch an Islamist as they are; to mix religious metaphors, he has to be more Catholic than the Pope.
His outspokenness has advantages for the mullahs and the Supreme Leader they elect, who holds most of the real power. Seizing the limelight allows non-Arab Iran to pursue its goal of becoming the leader of the mostly Arab Middle East. And Ahmadinejad’s vitriol makes the mullahs seem almost moderate by comparison.
His combativeness has another upside: it serves to shift attention from economic problems at home. Despite a huge rise in oil revenues, there is grumbling in Tehran’s streets about economic conditions, reflecting the gross inefficiency of its bloated bureaucracy and centralized economy. Despite Iran’s oil wealth and bravado, the government fears Western economic sanctions that would force it to spend more to subsidize food and fuel.
Growing speculation about a nuclear showdown in the Middle East is premature, according to Milani. “I don’t see them picking on Israel militarily because they know that they will pay a very heavy price,” he says. “Even in arming Hezbollah, they’ve been very careful. They have allowed Hezbollah to become more of a nuisance, they have given them more staying power, but not any weapon that could seriously change the balance with Israel or make Hezbollah a more lethal threat. I think the war in one sense was a big loss for the Iranians. They won a publicity war but not much else.”
Scholar Trita Parsi agrees. “Israel is a means for Iran, just as Iran is a means for Israel.”
And Parsi doesn’t believe that the Iranian people would support a war against Israel. “I think the larger feeling among the population is that it’s really not Iran’s main problem. People don’t like what Israel is doing [in the occupied territories] but they don’t like Arabs, either. A poll says that 67 percent of Iranians say that Israel does not have right to exist. But does that mean that they think Iran has to do anything about this? I don’t think so.”
Nonetheless, many Iranian expatriates long for regime change. Houman Sarshar doubts the voices calling for change inside Iran will remain silent. “A population of 75 million—with approximately 50 million born after 1978—is being run by a population of mullahs 60 and 70-plus [years old]. If only 60 percent [of the population] wants a completely secular government, then it’s over,” he says.
Milani believes that without $70-per-barrel oil, the regime would not survive long. “The age of pseudo-totalitarian corrupt dictatorships has come to an end,” he says. “The majority of Iranian society doesn’t want it. But tactically this is a very nimble regime, very brutal, and it has a lot of money.”
However, Jerusalem-based Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar, co-author of the forthcoming book The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran, believes the chance of regime change is small. “Iranians are suffering from conflict fatigue after the Islamic Revolution, followed by one of the longest wars in modern history. They are tired. And there’s no alternative. Who are they going to revolt for? People don’t want chaos—who is going to give them hope? Who are they going to die for? Don’t expect Tiananmen.”
Iranians are upset that the government has shut down blogs as well as Shargh, the reformist newspaper. “It makes people angry. But go to the streets to revolt?” says Javedanfar. “Only two things would make a revolution overnight. One: Shoot the entire Iranian football team. Two: Ban the sale and eating of Persian rice. Then you will have a revolution on your hands. Until then, as they say in New Jersey, fuggedaboutit.”
As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commands the world’s attention, Abdol Hossein Sardari, who died in 1981, has been all but forgotten. When the courageous diplomat returned to Iran after the war, he was imprisoned for the unauthorized distribution of passports, says George Hooranian. “After 30 days he was released by the Shah. The Shah said he did a good deed. He saved people’s lives.”
There is no memorial to Sardari in Iran, or until recently, anywhere else, says Haroonian. In 2004, Iranians living in the United States organized two Yom Hashoah events to honor the diplomat. One was at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the other at the Nessah Educational and Cultural Center in Beverly Hills. A cut glass tablet reads: “In memory of and admiration of his humanitarian and courageous efforts that led to the saving of many innocent lives while serving as the Iranian Consul in France during World War II.”
Inspired by Sardari’s deeds, and angry that he has received so little recognition, Hooranian collected hundreds of pages of documents and personally delivered them to Yad Vashem in Israel. He would like for Sardari to be become the first Iranian bestowed with the designation of Righteous Among the Nations, a title awarded to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The public committee that decides who should be given this honor has discussed Sardari’s case twice, and reports that it is “very interesting.” A decision has not yet been made, pending further documentation. But the necessary information is not forthcoming; the Iranian government has refused to cooperate.
“How sad,” says Haroonian, “that Sardari—and what he represents—cannot be honored in Iran.”
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(http://www.momentmag.com/features/dec06/2006-12_Iran.html)
Copywrite Moment Magazine
The complex tale of how the Persian Empire founded by Cyrus the Great—the world’s “first” Zionist—metamorphosed into the Israel-Hating nation we know today.
How Jew- Friendly Persia Became Anti-Semitic Iran
Abdol Hossein Sardari didn’t look like a hero. But when Paris fell to Hitler in June 1940, the 30-year-old Muslim—a dapper man with a receding hairline—took it upon himself to save Jews trapped inside Nazi-occupied France. Sardari, a junior official at the Iranian Embassy, had been left behind to look after the building when the Iranian ambassador and his staff abandoned Paris to establish residence in Vichy, the new home of France’s pro-Nazi government. Once the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sardari, without authorization from his government, made liberal use of the embassy’s supply of blank Iranian passports to assign new, non-Jewish identities to those in need, creating his own version of Schindler’s list.
Ibrahim Morady, who died this past June in Los Angeles at the age of 95, was one of the hundreds of Jews Sardari helped spare from deportation. “My father moved to Paris from Persia when he was six,” recounts his son Fred. Once Morady, a well-to-do rug merchant, had his new identity, he and two colleagues arranged to purchase false papers for about 100 other Jews of Iranian descent. Sardari served as their go-between, passing a bribe to a German official. In return, these Jews were given documents asserting that they were members of “some strange tribe in Iran—Djouguti, or something like that,” Fred Morady explains. “I asked my father: ‘What does this name mean?’ And he said: ‘They just made it up.’”
Sardari was not the only Iranian to protect Jews during World War II. The Iranian government itself kept its 3,000-year-old Jewish community out of Nazi reach. But his heroism is representative of Iran’s civilized and empathetic attitude toward its Jews.
This attitude stands in marked contrast to the vitriolic Islamic Republic of Iran led by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that we hear and read about today. The world was stunned when Ahmadinejad, the former mayor of Tehran, felled an Iranian political giant—Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani—in the 2005 presidential election. Ahmadinejad, a radically conservative veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, an arm of the country’s Islamic establishment, quickly became a confrontational presence. Standing aside a banner that read “The World Without Zionism,” he whipped up a crowd of 4,000 students at an October 2005 conference in Tehran. “Our dear Imam ordered that the occupying regime in Al Quds be wiped off the face of the earth,” Ahmadinejad declared, referring to the late Ayatollah Khomeini and using the Arabic name for Jerusalem. “Anyone who would recognize this state has put his signature under the defeat of the Islamic world.”
The president also garnered world headlines when he publicly pronounced the Holocaust a “myth.” He has since slightly toned down his rhetoric, questioning why, if the Holocaust happened, the Palestinians should suffer for it. “Under the pretext of protecting some of the survivors of the war, the land of Palestine was occupied through war, aggression and the displacement of millions of its inhabitants,” he told the United Nations General Assembly this September, ignoring the historic presence of Jews in Palestine.
When it comes to the Jews, Abdol Hossein Sardari and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad represent the two faces of Iran. This Muslim, but not Arab, country that protected its Jews from the Holocaust now questions whether that genocide ever occurred. Once one of Israel’s closest Muslim allies, Iran now seeks to wipe the “Zionist entity” off the map. Tens of thousands of its Jews have left, yet Iran still retains the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country.
These contradictions have been embedded in the country’s history since ancient times. “In a sense, the story of the Jews of Iran is literally the Bible itself,” says Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. “The Bible says God asked Cyrus the Great [the founder of the Persian Empire] to build the Second Temple and Cyrus did. And Esther, a Jew married to the king of Persia, exposed the anti-Semitic, genocidal plot of Haman [his chief minister], and it was aborted. These two tendencies—the Hamanic anti-Semitic tendency and the tendency to welcome and accept the Jews and the rights that they have—have come all the way to the 21st century.”
The first charter of human rights ever set to paper predates the Magna Carta by some 1,700 years. It was drafted not within the baronial estates of medieval England but in a desert palace in the Middle East. “I announce that I will respect the traditions, customs and religions of the nations of my empire,” proclaimed Cyrus upon entering the gates of Babylon on the first day of spring in 539 B.C.E., “and never let any of my governors and subordinates look down on or insult them.”
Cyrus’s reign is warmly remembered as the Persian equivalent of Camelot, the mythical English court ruled by King Arthur. “Iranians take a lot of pride in the old civilization started by Cyrus,” says Sam Kermanian, secretary general of the Iranian-American Jewish Federation in Los Angeles. “He was extremely tolerant of other beliefs and ideologies; that, too, is an added measure of pride.”
Cyrus is also sometimes referred to as the world’s first Zionist. He righted the wrong done by King Nebuchadnezzar II 58 years earlier when he captured Jerusalem and Judah, and exiled thousands of Jews. “All the kingdoms of the earth the Lord, the God of heaven, has given to me and he has also charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah,” Cyrus declared. He offered the Jews the opportunity to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple at Persian taxpayer expense. Many accepted, while others remained in Persia.
Typically depicted as a bearded warrior-king with broad shoulders in a military tunic and helmet, Cyrus was killed in 529 B.C.E. in a battle in northern Persia. The Jews fared less well under his son, Cambyses II, who suspended construction of the Temple. But a few years later, work was resumed under King Darius. According to the Bible, Esther was the beloved wife of Darius’s son. Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus.
Overall, life was good for the Jewish community under the early Persian kings. “From what we know, the Jews were well trusted and tolerated,” says Houman Sarshar, a scholar with the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History who edited an anthology called Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews. He points to the prominence of Jewish prophets in the Persian Empire and notes that Ezra held the respected job of scribe in the royal court. “The Jews weren’t seen as a threat to anyone else’s way of life,” Sarshar says. But with the advent of Islam their world would change.
A battle in 642 C.E., which Arabs hail as the “victory of victories,” brought an end to the golden age of Persian Jews. Some 30,000 battle-hardened Arab Muslims assembled at Nehavend, along the western Persian border, and defeated the 150,000-man Persian army, ending 2,000 years of Persian independence. The caliphate was then controlled from Damascus and Baghdad.
Although Muslims revered Jews as “the people of the Book,” the imposition of Islam led to second-class citizenship for Persia’s minorities—Jews, Zoroastrians, and Armenian and Assyrian Christians. “After the rapid expansion of the Muslim dominion, Muslim leaders were required to find a way of handling non-Muslims, who remained in the majority in many areas,” says Nahid Pirnazar, who teaches Iranian studies at the University of Southern California at Los Angeles and is founder and director of the House of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts Foundation. As a way of both protecting and discriminating against minorities, Islamic leaders came up with the notion of dhimma, or protected minorities. “The dhimmi were required to pay an extra tax but usually were unmolested,” says Pirnazar. “This compares well to the treatment meted out to non-Christians in Christian Europe.”
Over time, the list of hardships and humiliations grew. The Pact of Umar, named after the reigning leader from 634 to 644 C.E., established harsher laws for non-Muslims. Jews were barred from government office and the military, and forbidden to ride on white donkeys, which were seen as symbols of cleanliness. They were forced to wear yellow armbands, while Christians had to don blue ones.
After the Mongols invaded Persia in the second half of the 13th century, the standing of the country’s Jews improved dramatically. “This period was the highlight of the life of Jews in Islamic Iran,” says Pirnazar. “The Mongol rulers at the time were secular, not yet converted to Islam, so Jews had a chance to penetrate into socio-political and cultural levels.”
This didn’t last. Treatment of minorities deteriorated after the Safavids took power in the 1500s, imposing their hard-line brand of Shia Islam and ushering in “the worst era of Persian-Jewish relations,” says political scientist Eliz Sanasarian of the University of Southern California, author of Religious Minorities in Iran.
The Safavids forcibly converted Iran’s Sunni Muslims to Shia Islam and introduced the concept of “ritual pollution,” which further segregated minorities from their neighbors. Because nonbelievers were deemed spiritually and physically contagious, Jews were barred from leaving their houses when it rained, for fear the water would transmit their impurities. A Jew who entered a Muslim home had to sit on a special rug and could not be offered tea, food or a water pipe, since any object touched by a Jew could no longer be used by a Muslim.
Safavid rule came to an end in 1736, but the Muslim perception of Jews as impure remained. Occasional violent outbreaks, reminiscent of the blood libels and pogroms carried out in Europe, punctuated the next two centuries of Qajar Dynasty rule. In one incident in the northeastern town of Mashhad in 1839, an ailing Jewish woman was told to use dogs’ blood to cure a certain malady. A rumor quickly spread that she had tried the cure on a Shia holiday, deliberately insulting the sect. Jews were attacked and some three dozen killed, while the rest of the Jewish community was given the choice of conversion to Islam or death. Such bloody outbreaks persisted until the 20th century, when a new breed of shah came to power.
Born in the isolated northern Persian village of Alasht in 1878, Reza Pahlavi was the son of a military officer. Pahlavi was a man of powerful military bearing, most often portrayed with a thick handlebar mustache and a curved knife hanging from his scabbard. In 1925, he deposed the last shah of the Qajar Dynasty, giving himself the title Reza Shah.
For the first time in 1,400 years, an Iranian ruler reached out to his country’s Jews, bowing to the Torah to show his respect during a visit to the Jewish community of Isfahan, banning mass conversions and discouraging the idea that non-Muslims were unclean.
While respectful of Iran’s Jews, Reza Shah was fascinated by Nazi Germany. With German encouragement—and to emphasize that Persians are Aryan, not Arab—he changed the country’s name to Iran—from the old Persian “Arynam” or “of the Aryans.”
Iran, sitting of vast pools of oil, became of great strategic importance during World War II. Hitler coveted the oil, sparking fears of an Iranian-German alliance. As a result, Britain and the Soviet Union invaded and occupied Iran in 1941, forcing the Shah to abdicate in favor of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Though the younger Pahlavi was seen as a playboy more interested in fast cars than in governing, he had a bold vision for his nation.
A man of grandiose self-image, the new Shah viewed himself as heir to Cyrus the Great and as such was a friend of the Jews. Under his rule, the community “enjoyed almost total cultural and religious autonomy, experienced unprecedented economic progress and had more or less the same political rights as their Muslim compatriots,” says David Menashri, a Tel Aviv University expert on Iran.
To protect them from the Nazis, Iran assured the Germans that its Jews were fully assimilated Iranians called kalimis—a term derived from the accolade for Moses in Koran. The Nazis, still more interested in Iran’s oil, acquiesced, and also turned a blind eye to the fact that the Shah was providing an escape route for thousands of European Jewish refugees.
Rachel Meer, a Jewish Iranian expatriate who lives on the upper west side of Manhattan, remembers her father telling her the story of how, during World War II, he helped Jews pass through Iran. “He purchased a huge army tent to protect these refugees,” she says. “When he married my mother, the Jews traveling through were invited to the wedding.” Later, when great numbers of Iraqi Jews left their homes for the newly born state of Israel, they too were granted passage, says Shaul Bakhash, a veteran Mideast analyst at George Mason University in Virginia. “Iran was one of the few countries that did not charge the Zionist organization for this permission.”
At first Iran had opposed the partition of Palestine, says Trita Parsi, author of the forthcoming book Treacherous Triangle—The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States. “But once it was done, Iran and Israel realized they had common interests and common enemies.” In the 1960s, Iran developed a military relationship with Israel and Israeli technicians assisted Iran with agricultural projects. Both nations, wary of Arab domination of the Middle East, saw value in creating a non-Arab “outer ring,” consisting of Iran, Israel, Turkey and Ethiopia.
With the exception of Turkey, Iran stood virtually alone in the Middle East in its acceptance of the state of Israel. But in doing so, the Shah walked a fine line. As Iran’s covert ties with Israel became public, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser launched a campaign against the Shah. At home, his efforts to westernize Iran faced opposition from mullahs—Iran’s Islamic clerics—on the right and intellectuals on the left, all of whom condemned his government as repressive.
After Israel seized and occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and East Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, the Iranian clergy’s antipathy toward Israel increased sharply. “1967 changed many minds,” says Menashri. He recounts the story of the 200-rial banknote to illustrate the Shah’s precarious position.
It was 1974, a time of great tension: Arab oil-producing nations had imposed an oil embargo on the West, but the Shah, wishing to maintain his strategic alliance with Washington and Jerusalem, refused to stop supplying them with oil. The Arabs were incensed. What seemed like routine government business—the replenishment of currency by issuing 10 million new 200-rial notes—quickly grew into a crisis. On the day the new currency was to be distributed to banks, attention fell on a six-pointed star on the back of the bill. Though the star was of a traditional Iranian design, rumors spread that the currency had been printed in Israel. Fearing rebellion, the government withdrew the notes that same day.
Protests against the Shah continued to escalate and the storm clouds of revolution gathered. “The revolution did not have Islamic overtones at first—it was a revolution of the intelligentsia and it was pro-democracy,” recalls Esther’s Children author Sarshar. “But, very quickly, in about two or three months, all the craziness started.” While many Jews were sympathetic to the protestors, the community was seen as an ally to the Shah and part of the ruling establishment—thus an enemy of the revolution.
The most influential of the revolutionaries was a religious leader with a flowing beard who sat brooding in exile in a Parisian suburb: Ayatollah Rohollah Mousavi Khomeini. Born in 1902 near the holy city of Qom, Khomeini had been exiled from Iran in 1964 for condemning the Shah’s modernization policies. After 13 years in Iraq, he moved to France, where he continued to challenge the regime. Via smuggled audiotapes of his sermons, he fanned the swelling protests against the Shah’s regime from afar and inspired Iran’s Islamic Revolution.
By 1978, widespread strikes had led to the collapse of the economy and, on December 12, two million protestors gathered on Tehran’s Azadi Square. On January 16, 1979, the Shah fled Iran into exile. Two weeks later, enormous crowds greeted Khomeini’s triumphant return to Tehran on a chartered Air France airliner. That November 4, a mob of angry students, spurred on by his denouncement of the United States as an enemy of Islam stormed the American Embassy, taking 66 Americans hostage. The demonstrators included a young rabble-rouser named Ahmadinejad who also advocated seizing the Soviet Embassy. A new age of Islamic fundamentalism for Iran had begun, spelling great uncertainty for its 80,000 Jews.
As a skinny, brainy Tehran teenager in the 1970s, Roya Hakakian was one of many young Jews who supported the Islamic Revolution despite the nervous admonitions of their parents. For them, participation was not only an adventure but affirmation they were fully assimilated Iranians. Hakakian, now a 39-year-old mother in Connecticut, has written a memoir, Journey From the Land of No, that provides a glimpse into the turmoil that followed the Revolution.
Initially, the Islamists were too busy imposing their rules on society at large to worry about the Jews. “People weren’t permitted to laugh on the streets on certain national mourning days; it was a crime to be with a boy you weren’t related to; we had to cover our heads and we couldn’t hold hands,” Hakakian recalls. Women couldn’t appear in public without a veil and garments like the chador that revealed not a clue of femininity. Women also lost the right to divorce, and most engineering and law schools began refusing them admission. People could be arrested—and sometimes executed—for possession of books such as The Communist Manifesto, or music cassettes. “Those were the Khmer Rouge days,” Hakakian says.
Hakakian’s first brush with the new order came when she and a few friends went for a hike in a public park in the Alborz, part of a mountain range outside Tehran. Encountering a sign that said the mountain was “closed,” they giggled and ignored it. As they ascended, some of the girls loosened their mandatory head scarves. Soon, they were stopped by a teenager in army fatigues toting a Kalashnikov, who demanded to know what they were doing. Three other uniformed men joined him and took the group to a detention center. There, a policeman found a Jewish prayerbook in Hakakian’s pocketbook; ironically, that broke the tension. “Jews are cowards,” one of the uniformed men said. “They never get mixed up in politics. And we thought we’d got ourselves a pack of leftists or royalists.” The girls were sent home.
“For once in Jewish history,” says Hakakian wryly, “Jewish stereotypes came to our aid.”
In the evenings, she and her friends would watch the show trials on television. Former leaders of the Shah’s government, stripped of their dignity and wearing cardboard signs with their names around their necks, were charged with offenses like “corruption on earth,” and taken to be shot. In March 1979, the spectacle hit close to home. Habib Elghanian, an industrialist who led the Jewish community council, was accused of corruption, contacts with Israel and Zionism, “friendship with the enemies of God,” “warring with God and his emissaries” and “economic imperialism.” He was tried by an Islamic revolutionary tribunal whose members kept their backs to him, refusing to look a traitor in the face.
Shot by firing squad on May 8, Elghanian was the first private citizen in Iran to be executed by the tribunal. His real crime was that he had failed to follow established custom for Jews and maintain a low profile. He had become a prominent figure under the Shah: While most well-off Iranian Jews were merchants with small businesses, Elghanian, owner of a huge conglomerate with interests in plastics, tile and aluminum, was a mogul. He even built a huge skyscraper in Tehran’s business district.
Within days of his execution, leaders of the Iranian Jewish community selected a delegation to meet with Khomeini. They chose two rabbis and four intellectuals, some of whom had joined the early street demonstrations against the Shah. Early one morning, the six men climbed into a station wagon and drove to Qom, one of them later told Hakakian’s father.
When they arrived, they were surprised to find that Khomeini, still not accustomed to the trappings of power, had cleared his calendar for their visit. As they seated themselves on folded blankets in a reception room, the Ayatollah entered. “Bism Allah al-Rahman al-Rahim,” one of the rabbis addressed him, invoking the name of God in Arabic in deference.
Khomeini began a long, roundabout discourse on subjects ranging from monotheism to how a man should choose a wife, to how to properly copulate, puzzling his Jewish audience. But when the Ayatollah completed his talk, his meaning became clear. “Moses would have nothing to do with these Pharaoh-like Zionists who run Israel,” he said. “And our Jews, the descendants of Moses, have nothing to do with them, either. We recognize our Jews as separate from those godless Zionists.”
When the Jewish delegation returned to Tehran, they spread the word: The Ayatollah had made Iran’s Jews kosher in the eyes of the Revolution. Soon all synagogues were painted with Khomeini’s decree and the Jews of Iran renounced Zionism.
True to its rhetoric, the Islamic Republic severed all official ties with Israel, but a clandestine relationship continued. Though Yasser Arafat was invited to Tehran and spoke of the plight of the mostly Sunni Palestinians, the Shia-Sunni divide and the fact that the Palestine Liberation Organization was largely secular meant that Iran’s support for the Palestinians was always lukewarm. Privately, Iran and Israel shared a common fear of the Arab states, especially Iraq. Israel sold Iran arms throughout the eight-year Iraq-Iran war.
In 1985, in the middle of that war, then-Prime Minister Shimon Peres helped broker a deal between the Reagan Administration and Iran. The agreement allowed the sale of American arms, including anti-tank missiles, to the Islamic Republic. In exchange, the United States sought Iranian influence to free Western hostages held by Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese group supported by Iran. (It also used the Iranian money to fund the anti-Communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.) When news of the deal surfaced, the Reagan Administration was embarrassed and politically damaged—both the United States and Israel had previously denied selling arms to the Islamic Republic.
At the end of the Cold War, Israel had a change of heart and concluded that Iran had become a major threat to its security. With Iraq severely weakened by its defeat in the Gulf War, Israeli strategists focused on Iran’s quest for long-range missiles and nuclear weapons as well as Iranian funding of Hezbollah. At press conferences in Jerusalem and during many visits to Washington in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yitzhak Rabin began emphasizing his desire to make peace with the Palestinians and with Syria because an even greater danger loomed: a nuclear Iran.
In 1977, Abbas Milani, then a political scientist at Tehran University, was arrested by the Shah’s police and thrown in jail. Considered a dangerous leftist academic, Milani shared a cell with some of the men who would become the leaders of the Islamic Revolution, including one of Ahmadinejad’s predecessors, Rafsanjani. Recalling his incarceration with the Islamists, he says bluntly, “I couldn’t stand them and they couldn’t stand me.”
Milani, who is not Jewish, left Iran for the United States in 1986, after the first waves of Iranian Jews fled the Revolution. He remembers that he first came to understand the special penalties that Iranian Jews faced under the mullahs when an Iranian friend, a prominent astrophysicist at Cambridge University, was invited to attend a conference in Tehran in 1982. The Iranian authorities had assured the young man he would have no problem returning to Britain, but because he was Jewish, they seized his passport upon his arrival and refused to return it.
“The poor guy had a wife and baby in England and they wouldn’t let him leave,” recalls Milani, who later discovered that the Islamic Republic had an unofficial policy of denying passports to young Iranian Jews to coerce their families into returning home after traveling abroad. They were in effect held hostage. “You can’t be a human being without feeling offended that this is happening in your name in your country,” says Milani.
Since the Islamic Revolution, approximately 75 percent of Iran’s Jews have fled the country. Estimates of the number that remain vary from 13,000 (the U.S. State Department’s 2005 International Religious Freedom Report, based on the most recent Iranian census) to the 25,000 to 30,000 claimed by the Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, a non-profit group based in New Haven, Connecticut. The difference, the Center says, stems from the fact that many Jews in Iran do not wish to call attention to their heritage.
Whatever their number, Jews make up a tiny and vulnerable fraction of Iran’s population of nearly 70 million. “Personally, I am very much concerned about attacks on Iranian Jews,” says George Haroonian, former president of the Council of Iranian American Jewish Organizations (CIAJO), a group of outspoken Iranian expatriates that advocates for the rights of Iran’s remaining Jews. “It’s my viewpoint that Iranian Jews are in a very precarious situation.”
CIAJO reports that since 1979, 10 Jews in addition to Elghanian have been executed, six have been assassinated by the regime, two have died as a result of being held in custody, eight have died under suspicious circumstances and 12 have disappeared.
The situation has become increasingly worse, says Haroonian. He points to the trial in 2000 of 13 Jews from Shiraz and Isfahan accused of illegal contact with Israel, conspiracy to form an illegal organization and recruiting agents, which provoked vandalism and boycotts of Jewish businesses. “This was the largest wholesale attack against the Jewish community,” Haroonian says. Ten of those charged were found guilty, although espionage charges were dropped and an appeals court overturned all the convictions but those for illegal contacts with Israel. By 2003 all had been released from prison; 10 remain on probation.
Iran has seen a recent wave of anti-Semitic propaganda masquerading as anti-Zionism in print, on television and within the educational system, heavily influencing what Iranians—a quarter of them under 15—learn about their Jewish neighbors. Last February, Iran’s largest newspaper Hamshahri sponsored an international Holocaust cartoon contest that solicited sinister anti-Semitic entries that were widely displayed. In 2000, the Al-Manar television station aired a claymation special in which Jews were turned into apes and pigs. In 2004, the station Sahar 1 aired a weekly series Zahra’s Blue Eyes, also called For You, Palestine, in which the Israeli government is depicted as removing the blue eyes of Palestinian children for implantation into Jewish children. The claymation program “doesn’t say ‘all Jews are cursed,’” notes Yehudit Barsky, director of the Middle East and International Terrorism section of the American Jewish Committee. “It doesn’t say the Jewish person next door is evil. But still, the selection of this story is saying there were Jews who were evil and were punished. It’s a message of an insidious nature, not a direct nature.”
As the line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism becomes increasingly blurred, the Jews who remain in Iran continue to stick to the Khomeini formula. “The Iranian Jewish community has gone out of its way to condemn the state of Israel, including the recent war with Hezbollah,” says Nahid Pirnazar. Catholic University law professor Marshall Breger, who visited Tehran and Shiraz in 2003, says that the Iranian Jews he met expressed regard and affection for the people of Israel, but were not political Zionists. “They were creating what I would call Judaism without Israel,” he explains. “It’s not unknown. People would say, ‘it’s no problem to be a Jew’ but the more observant wouldn’t wear a kippah outside because people in Iran know kippahs as a symbol of the Israel Defense Forces.”
While Iranian Jews are loath to speak out in defense of Israel, they do occasionally draw attention to other matters, such as anti-Jewish stereotypes in the media and the government’s campaign denying the Holocaust. Earlier this year, Haroun Yashayaei, chair of the Tehran Jewish community, sent an extremely rare letter of protest to Ahmadinejad, expressing concern about the president’s statements about the Holocaust. His objections were seconded by Maurice Motamed, who holds the one seat allotted to Jews in the country’s 290-member parliament.
“When our president spoke about the Holocaust, I considered it my duty as a Jew to speak about this issue,” Motamed told the British newspaper The Guardian in a June 2006 interview. “The biggest disaster in human history is based on tens of thousands of films and documents. I said these remarks are a big insult to the whole Jewish society in Iran and the whole world.”
Motamed, an engineer, made clear to The Guardian that although he took issue with Ahmadinejad over the Holocaust, he supports the president on other issues, including the standoff with the United States, Europe and Israel over Iran’s nuclear program. “I am an Iranian first and a Jew second,” he stressed. Although he acknowledged that Jews in Iran face problems, he assured readers that “there is no pressure on synagogues, no problems of desecration. I think the problem in Europe is worse than here. There is a lot of anti-Semitism in other countries.”
Similar sentiments can be found on the Jewish Central Committee of Iran’s website, iranjewish.com. “Iran’s Jewish community congratulates the achievement of nuclear fuel to the supreme leader, the Islamic Republic officials and all Iranians,” a May 2006 entry reads. “We celebrate the coincident of this victory with the New Year and the unforgettable days of Passover.”
Generally, Jews who have chosen to stay in Iran say that they are content and have no wish to leave their homeland. Tehran has more than a dozen active synagogues, and large groups of Jews also live in Shiraz and Isfahan. “Jews stay in Iran because they have their jobs, their lives and they love it,” says Shirin Taleh, a family therapist who left Iran in 2001 with her children to join the rest of her family in California and has visited twice since then, including a stay earlier this year.
Taleh believes her children will have more opportunities in the United States but dearly misses the country of her birth. She balks at the notion that Iran discriminates against Jews. “I would say ‘limitation’ rather than ‘discrimination.’ Two words, two meanings. Limitations for everyone, not just the Jewish community. We have some freedoms that the Muslims don’t have. Men and women mix. We are allowed to use alcohol for religious purposes. I don’t claim everything is OK. Everybody in the world abuses the name of the Jews. It’s an old problem between Muslims and Jews.” But, she makes clear, “I don’t know anything about political issues. I don’t want to go there.”
The decision to remain in Iran may not be measurable in rational ways. In 1998, when Manochehr Eliasi, Motamed’s predecessor as the Jewish member of parliament, was asked by a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter why Jews don’t leave, he burst into tears. “This is my birthplace,” Eliasi said. “I love its smell.”
In many ways, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sixth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the first non-cleric president in 24 years, is an exemplary product of modern Iran. Born to a modest family in a small village, he capitalized on high test scores to enter the civil engineering program at the Iran University of Science and Technology during the reign of the Shah. Later, he received his doctorate in a program funded by the Revolutionary Guards. With 12 percent of voters participating, he won the mayor’s office in 2003.
This 50-year-old newcomer to the world stage shocked analysts during his recent visit to the United Nations, not only by his hardline address to the General Assembly but by his seeming enjoyment of the limelight. He parried questions at a press conference, deftly handled CNN’s Anderson Cooper during a televised interview and spent 90 minutes jousting with two dozen members of the Council on Foreign Relations. He stayed on message: The New York Times reported that Ahmadinejad spent 40 minutes of the session challenging evidence that the Holocaust took place. “I think we should allow more impartial studies to be done on this,” he said after hearing the account of a Jewish member of the Council who saw the Dachau concentration camp at the end of World War II. After the meeting, former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft described Ahmadinejad to The New York Times as “a master of counterpunch, deception, circumlocution.”
Milani, who has followed Ahmadinejad’s rise to power, believes the Iranian president is truly anti-Semitic and is playing the Israel card to gain international attention and enhance his stature. “Had he not said those comments about the Holocaust and Israel, he would have come to the UN as a two-bit president of a despotic regime. Instead, they gave him a rock star treatment here, and it all translated into more power for him back home.”
“Not even a second-tier player” in Iran before the furor arose over his remarks, now he is world-renowned, says Milani. “The last month and a half, every time I have traveled and taken a cab, if the cab driver is Muslim and they get a whiff that I’m Iranian, they begin talking about Ahmadinejad as the man who is standing up to the Jews, to Israel and to America. It is working for him.”
Still, for all its bombastic rhetoric, Milani says he doesn’t believe the regime poses a direct threat to Iran’s Jews. “Is there a specific danger that Jews face? I don’t think so,” he says. “That kind of eliminationist anti-Semitism has never been part of Iranian history. Iranian anti-Semitism has been more or less limited to verbal pressure, verbal anti-Semitism, forcing Jews to live in ghettos, occasionally forcing them to wear the Star of David. Killings, pogroms—that’s European, not Iranian.”
Ahmadinejad’s statements about Israel and the Holocaust may have more to do with political pragmatism than anything else. A man of a secular background, he must show the mullahs that he is as staunch an Islamist as they are; to mix religious metaphors, he has to be more Catholic than the Pope.
His outspokenness has advantages for the mullahs and the Supreme Leader they elect, who holds most of the real power. Seizing the limelight allows non-Arab Iran to pursue its goal of becoming the leader of the mostly Arab Middle East. And Ahmadinejad’s vitriol makes the mullahs seem almost moderate by comparison.
His combativeness has another upside: it serves to shift attention from economic problems at home. Despite a huge rise in oil revenues, there is grumbling in Tehran’s streets about economic conditions, reflecting the gross inefficiency of its bloated bureaucracy and centralized economy. Despite Iran’s oil wealth and bravado, the government fears Western economic sanctions that would force it to spend more to subsidize food and fuel.
Growing speculation about a nuclear showdown in the Middle East is premature, according to Milani. “I don’t see them picking on Israel militarily because they know that they will pay a very heavy price,” he says. “Even in arming Hezbollah, they’ve been very careful. They have allowed Hezbollah to become more of a nuisance, they have given them more staying power, but not any weapon that could seriously change the balance with Israel or make Hezbollah a more lethal threat. I think the war in one sense was a big loss for the Iranians. They won a publicity war but not much else.”
Scholar Trita Parsi agrees. “Israel is a means for Iran, just as Iran is a means for Israel.”
And Parsi doesn’t believe that the Iranian people would support a war against Israel. “I think the larger feeling among the population is that it’s really not Iran’s main problem. People don’t like what Israel is doing [in the occupied territories] but they don’t like Arabs, either. A poll says that 67 percent of Iranians say that Israel does not have right to exist. But does that mean that they think Iran has to do anything about this? I don’t think so.”
Nonetheless, many Iranian expatriates long for regime change. Houman Sarshar doubts the voices calling for change inside Iran will remain silent. “A population of 75 million—with approximately 50 million born after 1978—is being run by a population of mullahs 60 and 70-plus [years old]. If only 60 percent [of the population] wants a completely secular government, then it’s over,” he says.
Milani believes that without $70-per-barrel oil, the regime would not survive long. “The age of pseudo-totalitarian corrupt dictatorships has come to an end,” he says. “The majority of Iranian society doesn’t want it. But tactically this is a very nimble regime, very brutal, and it has a lot of money.”
However, Jerusalem-based Middle East analyst Meir Javedanfar, co-author of the forthcoming book The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the State of Iran, believes the chance of regime change is small. “Iranians are suffering from conflict fatigue after the Islamic Revolution, followed by one of the longest wars in modern history. They are tired. And there’s no alternative. Who are they going to revolt for? People don’t want chaos—who is going to give them hope? Who are they going to die for? Don’t expect Tiananmen.”
Iranians are upset that the government has shut down blogs as well as Shargh, the reformist newspaper. “It makes people angry. But go to the streets to revolt?” says Javedanfar. “Only two things would make a revolution overnight. One: Shoot the entire Iranian football team. Two: Ban the sale and eating of Persian rice. Then you will have a revolution on your hands. Until then, as they say in New Jersey, fuggedaboutit.”
As Mahmoud Ahmadinejad commands the world’s attention, Abdol Hossein Sardari, who died in 1981, has been all but forgotten. When the courageous diplomat returned to Iran after the war, he was imprisoned for the unauthorized distribution of passports, says George Hooranian. “After 30 days he was released by the Shah. The Shah said he did a good deed. He saved people’s lives.”
There is no memorial to Sardari in Iran, or until recently, anywhere else, says Haroonian. In 2004, Iranians living in the United States organized two Yom Hashoah events to honor the diplomat. One was at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, the other at the Nessah Educational and Cultural Center in Beverly Hills. A cut glass tablet reads: “In memory of and admiration of his humanitarian and courageous efforts that led to the saving of many innocent lives while serving as the Iranian Consul in France during World War II.”
Inspired by Sardari’s deeds, and angry that he has received so little recognition, Hooranian collected hundreds of pages of documents and personally delivered them to Yad Vashem in Israel. He would like for Sardari to be become the first Iranian bestowed with the designation of Righteous Among the Nations, a title awarded to non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
The public committee that decides who should be given this honor has discussed Sardari’s case twice, and reports that it is “very interesting.” A decision has not yet been made, pending further documentation. But the necessary information is not forthcoming; the Iranian government has refused to cooperate.
“How sad,” says Haroonian, “that Sardari—and what he represents—cannot be honored in Iran.”
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